Dear Parents, Teachers and Students,


Welcome, everyone, to the 2025 school year. I hope that the school holidays were a restful and rejuvenating break for all our students and staff and that everyone is looking forward to a joy-filled year of learning. A very special welcome to Mt Carmel’s new Kindergarten students and to all students and families who are joining the Mt Carmel community this year. I hope you and your children will soon feel very at home here at Mt Carmel School. As always, there has been much going on around our buildings and grounds over the Christmas break in preparation for the new school year. I am very grateful to all staff for their preparation of classrooms and learning spaces throughout the school over the holidays. Thanks to Robbie Shepherd for preparing the school grounds; he has spent many hours making our school look beautiful.

We have a busy start to the new year: we had a very successful swimming carnival last Friday; our Welcome BBQ and Open Classroom Evening will be held this evening, Wednesday 12 February between 5pm and 6:30pm; our Opening School Mass and Leadership Induction Ceremony will be held tomorrow, Thursday 13 February, at 9:30am in St Augustine’s Church; on Friday 21 February we will have our Book Fair and Grandparents' Morning Tea; we will be holding our traditional Pancake Breakfast on Shrove Tuesday, 4 March from 7:30am, followed by our Ash Wednesday Prayer Service on 4 March; and that’s just the first half of the term! 


Communication
Open, honest and timely communication is a very important part of our relationship with parents. If you have any concerns about any aspect of your child’s progress, your first point of contact should always be your child’s teacher. Please email them directly or phone the school office to leave a message and they will be able to organise a mutually convenient time for a meeting or conversation. Likewise, please do not hesitate to make contact with me directly if you have any concerns, questions or feedback about any aspect of school life at Mt Carmel. You can make contact via the school office or send an email to me directly at michael.green@cg.catholic.edu.au. Please remember, though, that staff may not respond to emails or return phone calls after 4:30pm and before 8:30am during the week and not at all on weekends. We hope you support our endeavour to promote a healthy work-life balance for our staff.

Remember, too, that Compass is the main channel that we use to communicate with the school community, so please ensure that you can access your Compass account and have notifications enabled from the app, and that your contact details, including email address, are current. You can also use Compass to email your child’s teacher directly. If you have any difficulty accessing Compass, please contact the school office for assistance.

Tomorrow at 9:30am Fr Peter will help or school to welcome the new year by celebrating Mass with us in St Augustine’s Church and blessing our new student leaders. Families are welcome to attend Mass to celebrate with us. Our theme this year is ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, which Pope Francis declared as the Catholic Church’s Jubilee theme for 2025. The tradition of a Jubilee Year, usually held every 25 years in the Catholic Church, has its origins in the Old Testament where, in the Book of Leviticus (the Hebrew book of Laws), every fiftieth year is declared sacred, with prisoners and slaves set free, debts forgiven, and a pilgrimage to one’s ancestral lands undertaken.

Over the coming weeks, I will draw your attention to different parts of the Pilgrims of Hope logo starting, today, with the four figures in the centre. These characters, each different in colour (and pleasingly, to me anyway, matching our school house and class colours) represent the diversity of humanity, coming together from the four corners of the earth. Their alignment and shape indicate forward movement – they are certainly going somewhere – in a journey of solidarity and fraternity, united as one.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Jubilee Year, go to https://www.iubilaeum2025.va/en/giubileo-2025/segni-del-giubileo.html.


Welcome BBQ and Open Classrooms
This afternoon we will be holding a welcome BBQ and Open Classrooms. The BBQ will commence at 5pm on the school playground, and the classrooms will be open between 5:30pm and 6:30pm. Thanks to those who have submitted an RSVP to the BBQ; if you haven’t completed and RSVP and would like to come, don’t worry, just show up. There will be plenty of food to go around, including gluten-free and vegetarian options. Come along and meet some of the families of the students that your child will be journeying with this year. 

The open classrooms are an opportunity for your child to show you their classroom and introduce you to their teacher. Each class will have information for parents to familiarise you with routines for the year and topics of study for Term 1.


Canteen News
Alex Tapia, who was running the canteen for us in the second half of 2024 has decided to step down from this position; I would like to publicly acknowledge Alex for her contribution to the school and thank her sincerely for her hard work; the students will certainly miss visiting ‘Chef Alex’. Unfortunately, this means that the canteen will not be open until further notice; we will commence recruitment for a canteen manager shortly. 


Drinking Water
Everyone who lives in Yass knows, I’m sure, that the drinking water is a bit of an acquired taste. Following issues with the drinking water supply in 2024, Landon Hodgekinson, a previous Mt Carmel parent, organised for the supply and installation of an ingenious Watergen device that produces clean, filtered drinking water from humidity in the air. This unit has been installed in the corridor outside the Learning Support Room, and students are welcome to use it to top up their drink bottles during the day. Thank you, Landon!

Kindergarten Rest Days and Assessment
I hope that everyone’s first days of ‘Big School’ have been filled with excitement and fun. Kindergarten testing commenced today and will continue on rest-day Wednesdays until Week 5. Please contact the school office to book an appointment time with your child’s teacher, if you haven’t already done so. The final rest day will be on March 5, with full weeks commencing in Week 6. 


New School Counsellor
This year we welcome Amelie Nicholson to Mt Carmel as our CatholicCare school counsellor. Amelie will be at Mt Carmel on Mondays and Tuesdays and has already had a comprehensive handover with Damian, our previous counsellor. If you believe that your child may benefit from speaking with our school counsellor, have a conversation with their classroom teacher or contact the school office for a referral form.


Book Fair and Grandparents’ Morning Tea
Next Friday 21 February, Mt Carmel School will be holding the Scholastic Book Fair and Grandparents' Morning Tea. Look for further details in the Library News section of the Carmeletta.

Food Allergies
Although Mt Carmel does not declare ourselves to be a nut-free school, we do encourage all our students and families to be allergy aware. Last week, if your child is sharing a classroom with another student who suffers from a food or contact allergy, you would have received a Compass notification outlining precautions that we ask you to consider. Please also have a conversation with your child about the importance of not sharing food at school, as part of our Stay Safe rule.


Road Safety
The start of the year is a good time to give a reminder about traffic safety around the school. I ask all parents to model safe behaviour when driving, parking and crossing roads around the school. Please be mindful that the length of Dutton St from the school office to the Meehan St intersection is a no parking zone before and after school, so you can use these spaces to drop-off or pick up, but if you leave your vehicle, you may be booked. The entire length of Dutton St is marked with double-unbroken lines, so it is illegal (and unsafe) to perform a U-turn in front of the school. If you are picking up your child in the afternoon and have parked on the residential side of Dutton St, please do not call your child to cross to you but come and collect them and cross safely together; do not cross the road in the bus zone.

It can be very hectic after 3:10pm, and nobody wants to be inconvenienced, but walking a little bit further or waiting a few minutes longer is a small price to pay for the safety of everyone in our community.

Please also be mindful of the fact that our school is situated in the middle of a residential area. Courteous behaviour from everyone in our school community goes a long way to maintaining good relations with our neighbours.


Playgroup
The Mt Carmel Playgroup will commence on Thursday 27 March in Week 4, running each Thursday between 9 and 11am. All families with pre-school aged children are welcome, so please spread the word if you have a family friend who may enjoy attending. The cost of $3 for the first child and $1 for each subsequent child in the family covers morning tea and art/craft supplies. Thanks to Amber Maher for leading our Playgroup.


Reconciliation
A reminder to families of students in Year 3 and above that this Sunday at 10:15am is the Commitment Mass for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.


School Attendance - Every Day Counts
A reminder that any student absence is required to be explained promptly, preferably with an absentee note submitted via Compass. Notwithstanding the importance to public health of keeping children at home when they are sick, it is worth remembering that many small absences can quickly add up to have a big impact on your child’s learning – if your child misses as little as one day per fortnight, this equates to almost three full terms by the end of primary school. 

The Catholic Education Attendance Policy identifies the following levels of attendance:

• Excellent Attendance: 95% and above (e.g. 2.5 days absence or less in a term or 10 absences over a year)
• Regular Attendance: 90-94.9% (e.g. 2.6 to 5 days absence in a term or 10.1 to 20 absences over a year)
• Emerging Absenteeism: 80-89.9% (e.g. 5.1 to 10 days absence in a term or 20.1 to 40 absences over a year)
• Chronic Absenteeism: Less than 80% (e.g. more than 10 days absence in a term or 40 absences over a year)

2025 Student Residential Address Collection
Each year, as part of our census obligations, we are required to provide The Australian Government with certain information about students enrolled at our school. The information provided informs Australian Government school education policy and helps ensure funding for non-government schools is based on need. The information collected is used to inform school funding calculations. It is combined with Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data to calculate a non-government school community’s anticipated capacity to contribute to schooling costs. Attached to this newsletter is a notice from the Federal Department of Education, containing information for families about the Collection.


Free Parent Webinar
Later this month, Catholic Schools NSW and the Council of Catholic Schools Parents are offering a free webinar for parents called SchoolSpeak 101. The purpose of the webinar is to help parents understand some of the contemporary language of education, in order. Further information can be found further in the newsletter. 

May God’s peace be in your families, 

Michael Green
Principal