Loving God, You are present to us whenever we are together as a faith community.

Help us to always be a place where everyone feels accepted, safe and loved.

Help our school be a place of faith so that we can help others believe in You.

Fill us with Your Spirit so that we may reflect Your light and love to each other and the whole world as one Body of Christ.

Well, the first two weeks of term have flown by and there have been lots of great things going on around St Paul's. We even got a taste of some warmer weather last week!

Recently, I've had the pleasure of showing several families around St Paul's and telling them all of the wonderful things about our school and community. For a small school, we offer so much as we attempt to cater for the different needs and interests of our students. It has been really great to hear about our school's impressive reputation within the community. This is a credit to our whole school community, so thank you!

World Teachers' Day will be celebrated on Friday this week, so please take the time to express your appreciation for the incredible staff we have here at St Paul's.

I've included some information below about some of the things that have happened recently as well as some things that are coming up so please take the time to read this newsletter. If you make it to the end, there's a video recap of the last couple of weeks!

Thank you to those who responded to the survey about our Out of School Hours Care last week. Your feedback is appreciated and it was great to get so many responses! From here, we will take your intentions for next year as well as your feedback about the service and what people are looking for to work towards ensuring we have the most appropriate service for our school's situation and needs. It was good to hear people's thoughts on the service and what they are looking for so we can take this into consideration as we move forward.

St Paul's got our 80s on at our disco this year! It was a fantastic night and a great opportunity for our school community to come together and give the students an enjoyable time. Our appreciation and gratitude go out to Rachael and Juliet for coordinating the event and to everyone who helped. It was great to see how people just stepped in and helped where it was needed. These sorts of events are so important to bring our community together and we, as a school, are very grateful for the time and effort that was so generously given.

What a fantastic day to hold our Kindy and Pre-Primary Athletics Carnival last Tuesday was! The students were terrific, put an amazing amount of energy in and had a great afternoon under the expert organisation of Mr Sanders. He even managed to get the parents to do a Mexican Wave! I'd like to acknowledge the efforts of the staff involved in preparing the students and, in particular, Mr Sanders who, as always, put on a great carnival and brought his infectious energy to everyone! I had also better acknowledge Mrs Prior for winning the staff race and Mrs Piccioni for doing her best to provide interference to Mrs Prior and myself during the race! Next year I'll wear my running shoes! There are some photos on our post in Latest News.

Last week, our Pre-Primary to Year 6 students came together as a school to celebrate Mass for the beginning of Term 4. It was a great way to come together as a Catholic community and it was fantastic to have some parents along with us.

Last term, a group of our Year 6 students submitted entries into the National History Challenge and 2 students, Cristian and Isabella, have been successful in proceeding to the national judging stage. As state finalists, they are Young Historian Silver winners and will attend a presentation at the end of October. From here, their entries will be judged at the national level, where they are in competition with entrants from around Australia. This is a tough competition and this result is fantastic! Congratulations, Cristian and Isabella!

Our building project is currently in the tender process. A site visit has been conducted for those contractors wishing to tender. Once the tender process is complete and a contractor has been appointed, I will let the community know. At this stage, the aim is for the first stage of the build to commence over the Christmas holidays. We are looking forward to things getting started. Exciting times ahead!

Our founding sisters, the Sisters of our Lady of the Missions, celebrate 160 years since their foundation in France and 125 years since their arrival in WA this year. Recently, some of our staff represented St Paul's at a Thanksgiving Eucharist and function held at Sacred Heart in Highgate. It was a great opportunity to hear from some of the sisters about their history and so much of the amazing work they have done. We look forward to continuing our connection with them in the future.

What is expected to be the final COVID-19 update was sent out last week to CEWA schools. Most COVID-19 requirements have been removed and we have now moved to recommendations rather than mandated directions.

Students who test positive to COVID-19 should remain home until symptoms resolve. We ask that students who test positive or are identified as a close contact continue to register their RAT result and close contact status via WA Health and the Self-Reporting Portal on our website.

Thank you for your support and cooperation throughout the restrictions that we have found ourselves under during the pandemic. We look forward to continuing to bring back some of the things that have had to be cancelled or modified during the pandemic.

Don't forget to keep an eye on Latest News on our website. There have been several posts put up about different things happening around the school.

Regards,

Pete Merry

Principal

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