Dear Parents and Caregivers

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Thank you to everyone in the St. Michael’s community for your patience and strength during a difficult and worrying week. My sincere thanks go to all our parents who have been asking how we (the staff) are doing – this warms my heart and means the world. Our teachers are on ‘the front line’ so please continue to support them through these unprecedented times and continue to support each other!

COVID-19 Response

I sent another communication on COVID-19 via email earlier this week and a text message to ensure you were aware of the email. If you did not receive one or both of these communications, please let reception know asap so that we can update our system. This is vital to ensure you receive notification should the school need to close in the event of a positive COVID-19 test result.

We are understanding of any parents who may decide to keep their child/children at home at the moment. However, I would like to reiterate the information included in my email earlier in the week. Teachers will endeavour to send home missed work and classroom workbooks, however, we are unable to provide individualised education programs for those self-isolating, as teachers are currently preparing and delivering full time educational programs at school as well as planning for a continuation of the educational program in the event of a shut down. Correspondence to all schools from CEWA yesterday confirmed that providing work for those choosing to self-isolate is not a reasonable expectation at this time.

Overnight there has been an increase in community transmission and so we ask parents to help us reduce the number of visitors to the school site by dropping their children off at the gate where possible (and age appropriate), collecting students via the kiss and ride and reducing the number of visits to school during the day. If you do need to pop into the school, we ask you to please do so via reception.

School Response Plan

This week, we finished our draft school COVID-19 Response Plan. Thank you to staff, the school board, OSHclub and Tanwyn Travers for their input. We are just putting some finishing touches on the plan and teachers are getting ready. We are now well placed to handle a shut down should it occur. We have planned for both a two or three day shut down for the school to be cleaned in the event of a student or staff member receiving a positive COVID-19 test result and for a longer shutdown if the state or federal government decides to close all schools.

Please note, that if we experience an immediate shut down due to a positive test result, we will notify parents via email AND text message so please ensure your contact details are up to date. We will arrange to isolate and supervise any students who can’t be picked up immediately, however, please ensure your emergency contact details are also up to do date with the front office.

If schools are closed for a longer period of time, we will have some suggested daily activities to send home immediately and on Day 2 of the shutdown we will have learning activities ready to be posted online daily via SeeSaw (Kindy – Year 3) or Microsoft Teams (Year 4 – 6).

The Archbishop’s Response to COVID-19 – Masses and Sacraments

This week the Archbishop of Perth has confirmed the postponement of all sacraments and has cancelled all Masses, including weekend Masses for the next two weeks.

NAPLAN 2020 Cancelled

It has been announced today that NAPLAN 2020 will not proceed. The education ministers have met and the decision to not proceed with NAPLAN has been taken to assist school leaders, teachers and support staff to focus on the wellbeing of students and continuity of education, including potential online and remote learning.

School Fees

A reminder that school fee accounts have now been sent out and we ask that you make arrangements to organise a payment plan with the school by the end of term which ensures that this year’s fees are paid in full by the end of October. We encourage parents to organise a direct debit arrangement. We will be making contact at the end of term with anyone who does not have arrangements in place.

However, we are also mindful of the financial difficulties that some families may face during this period of social distancing and want to support you as best we can. If you do experience difficulties due to a downturn in work or job losses, please make an appointment to see me so that we can come to an arrangement regarding fees.

Change to After School Supervision – Hamilton Street

Currently the school provides supervision for students after school on both James and Hamilton Streets. However, in recent years, we have noticed that the trend has been for parents to collect students from James St. and only two or three families are using the drive through on Hamilton Street. We are now also seeing an increase in the number of students walking to the library after school, resulting in the need for two staff members on duty on James St. Hence, from Monday, we will be redeploying the duty teacher from Hamilton Street to James Street so that the second duty teacher can safely walk students over the road. We apologise for any inconvenience and ask anyone currently using the drive through at the church to please collect their child/children from the James St. kiss and ride.

P & F Meeting

Thank you to all who attended this week’s P & F meeting. As a group we looked at some uniform samples for some summer skorts so that female students can have an alternative to the summer dress if they feel that this is restricting their ability to play comfortably. A skort design was voted on and we will take this recommendation to the next board meeting.

A huge thank you to Pamela Mahar who has offered to take on the events co-ordinator role and Urshula Watson who has offered to co-ordinate school banking on a fortnightly basis. We are so appreciative of both ladies! Please note, however, that school banking is cancelled until further notice due to COVID-19 concerns.

Executive Work Desk for Sale

We currently have a dark wood executive work desk for sale. If you are interested please make us an offer!

Once again, please continue to pray and support each other. Let us make sure that kindness reigns at St. Michael’s in difficult times!

We send our love to all families who are choosing to self-isolate at this time – we miss you!!

Have a terrific weekend.

Dr Siobhan Galos
Principal
principal@stmichaelsbass.wa.edu.au.