Welcome to Week 9. It is nearly the end of another term, and everyone is looking toward the holiday period to refresh, relax and rejuvenate. However, until that time there is still so much to do. We continue with our orientation programs after a very successful Day 1 for Kinder 2025 last Thursday. Our Year 7 2025 will join us also this week to experience all that we have to offer and spend tie familiarising themselves with the secondary regime. Our Kinder students return again after their brief taste of “Big School”. Thank you to our fabulous staff who do extra to make sure that these opportunities are valuable and beneficial. We are excited to welcome 85 new students into our transition programs. Please let anyone know that may be interested that there is still time to consider Sacred Heart for 2025.

The Wattle Time parade and Sacred Heart float was a very well supported endeavour. The staff and students thoroughly enjoyed being part of the return of the festival and street parade. Thank you to Mrs Maxwell and her band of helpers for decorating the float so beautifully and for supervising our students.

It was a busy week for Mrs Maxwell who also led two Reflection Day experiences for our Kinder and our Stage 2 students respectively. These are important days to celebrate and explore their faith journey. According to all account they had a fabulous and insightful time sharing their understanding, experiences, and journey.

Thank you to our Student Leadership teams who organised and led the disco last Thursday night. Some fantastic costumes, entertaining dancing and a good time was had by all. Thank you to the staff who volunteered their time to supervise and offer this social activity to our students.

The safety and care of our students is always paramount in anything we undertake or offer. It is a legal imperative that we take responsibility for our students at all times when they are in our care. We are diligent in ensuring that all the necessary checks and measures are in place so that our students are safe. Parents entrust us with the care of their children and we take this responsibility very seriously. This also means that we must have permission when any parent also takes over the responsibility of other children. We must ensure that staff are always informed if you are collecting other students on behalf of another parent. Please let staff know before you collect or transport another child so that we are aware of where a student is once they depart a venue.

In the coming weeks (Week 10 Term 3 and Week 1 Term 4) our Year 9 and Year 8 students will depart on the annual excursion programs for their year groups respectively. Year 9 will head off on the train to Melbourne next week to take in the experiences of the Victorian capital and Year 8 will travel to Tathra in Term 4 for their beach sojourn. Thank you to the parents for the support of these initiatives. It is a big financial commitment by our families to allow these opportunities to run and we appreciate the generous commitment of our teachers to organise and supervise these excursions.  As always, the expectation for our students is that they conduct themselves with distinction. We wish them all safe travels and a fabulous time when they are away.

Today our elite athletes are competing in Sydney at the CCC Athletics carnival. We have 9 students who will compete against the best students in the catholic schools in the state. We wish them every success and safe travels. We will include results in the next newsletter.

There is still lots of time this term for more learning and activities. We have the First Aid assessment for our Year 10 students on Friday, Tag League competition for secondary girls and the official screening of the Man of Steel video recording on Thursday night. Lots to keep our students very busy until the very end of term.

To finish off this newsletter is a heartfelt plea from our amazing and dedicated canteen supervisor – Amanda. We are in desperate need of adult helpers to assist with lunch preparation and serving, especially on Thursdays and Fridays. Amanda does such a great job that the lunch orders have risen to above 140 orders on a Friday. As parents have grown busier we have had less and less adult helpers available to be on the roster. If you can spare anytime to assist in the canteen it would be greatly appreciated. We welcome mums, dads, grandparents or ex-students. Please contact the front office if you can help out.

Remember if you have to choose between being extraordinary or kind - be extraordinarily kind.

God Bless

Ms Nicky Trinder

Principal