We have had a wonderful start to the 2023 school year. The children appear to have settled back into school life very well and it is hard to believe that we are at the half way mark of Term One.

Beginning of Year Mass:

On Thursday the 16^th of February the whole school gathered to celebrate our Beginning of Year Mass. This was a beautiful and reverent celebration. I would like to thank James Lloyd for all of his hard work in putting this Mass together and Father Mathew for celebrating Mass with us. Thank you to Basia Jedrzejczak for her wonderful organisation of the music for this celebration. All the children involved in the Mass read, sang and played the bells beautifully. I was just blown away with how many talented singers we have at our school. A number of children sang solos as part of the Mass and their confidence to perform in front of over 500 people was amazing. This singing was well supported by all of the other children who combined to sing some beautiful harmonies. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought the children had been practising for over a month, not two and half weeks.

Our Beginning of Year Mass was wonderful whole school celebration.

Student Leaders:

Over the last couple of weeks our Year Six students have engaged in some learning around what makes a good student leader.

On Tuesday the 14^th of February all our Year 6 children were presented with their Year Six top, which signifies them as leaders within our school.  

We also ran a student leadership day with our Year Six students and a number of our Year 6 children decided to apply for our formal Student Leadership positions. In 2023 we have changed the structure of our Student Leadership positions at St Pius X. We have introduced 4 School Captain positions and there will continue to be 8 Sports Team Captains and 8 Sports Team Vice Captains. In order to be considered for this role the students were required to complete a written application and then prepare a speech which they presented to their peers and teachers. I must say that I was very impressed with the quality of the students who presented and it would be fair to say that there were more than 20 students who were worthy of undertaking a formal student leadership role in 2023. I have included the list of student leaders for 2023 and congratulate them on their achievement of being nominated.

Congratulations to all of our year 6 students who had the courage to put themselves forward for a leadership position.

“Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence, and inspiration.” (Robin S Sharma).

School Captains

Yesha Patel
Levi Lanfranco
Isabelle Gaston
Mia Edge

Sports Captains

School Board Open Meeting:

On Monday, March 20^th  all parents and community members are invited to an open School Board meeting. At this meeting I will share our plans with the community for our building programs, future school developments and vision for St Pius X school moving forward. We will also present our Chair of the Board report for 2022. This will also be an opportunity to meet the 2023 School Board.

This evening will commence at 6:30pm with drinks and nibbles, followed the meeting at 7:00pm. I anticipate that this meeting will conclude by 7:45pm.

We were absolutely delighted with the response for nominations for our School Board. We had a large number of nominations for this position. Early next week information will be sent out about the nominees then families will be given an opportunity to vote for two members to represent the community on the School Board in 2023 & 2024.

An invitation to our open School Board meeting along with the voting slip will be sent home via the SZapp next week.

Sports Day

Just a reminder that our whole school Sports Day will be held at Bridgestone Athletics Centre at Salisbury on Thursday April 13^th. Information about this day will be sent home next week. This year parents will have the option to transport their child to and from the venue or book a seat for their child on a bus that will leave from the school. Please keep an eye out for this information.

Student Reports and Parent & Teacher meetings  

In 2023 all Catholic Schools will be using a program called SEQTA to generate their student reports. The report formats will look a bit different to our previous reports as we only have a small number of different templates to choose from. One of the main differences in our reports will be that there will only be one general comment included with the report along with the student grades for both achievement and effort. In order provide as much information to parents as possible about their child’s progress we will be changing the structure of our parent and teacher meetings and providing families with an extra opportunity to meet with their child’s teacher for a formal meeting early in Term Three.

We will still be hosting parent and teacher meetings for parents wishing to have these at the end of Term One (Monday 3^rd and Tuesday 4^th of April). These meetings will be a 10 minute opportunity for you to catch up with your teacher to see how your child is settling in and ask any questions you have about their social or academic progress.

Early in Term Three, there we be another set of formal parent and teacher meetings which will be 15 minutes in duration, where parents can sit down with their child’s class teacher and discuss the student report that will be sent home at the end of Term Two.

As always parents are welcome to book a time to meet with their child’s class teacher whenever they see the need to and do not have to wait for these formal opportunities in order to discuss their child’s progress.

Pupil Free Day

Just a reminder that next Friday March 10^th  will be pupil free day. On this day our staff will be undertaking training on the new SEQTA reporting formats which have been outlined above.

Staffing Announcement

Many of you would have read the news last week that James Lloyd will be leaving St Pius at the end of this term to take up a new leadership role within the Archdiocese of Adelaide as Pastoral Leader: Justice, Healing and Inclusion. This will be a wonderful opportunity for James and a big loss for our community. We will ensure that we have a community celebration for James closer to the end of this term. Stay tuned for more details.