Dear Parents, Carers, Staff and Students,

This Wednesday 5 June is World Environment Day. World Environment Day is the United Nations Day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment. Since it began in 1974, the event has grown to become a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries. Each World Environment Day is organised around a theme that draws attention to a particularly pressing environmental concern. The theme for 2019 is “Air pollution”.

As a school community we will come together on Wednesday to celebrate this important event with a liturgy commencing at 10:00am in the hall. I warmly encourage parents and carers to attend our liturgy. The students will also be focusing on activities in the classroom that raise their awareness and understanding about the role we all play in caring for our environment.

Over the last twelve months the staff have participated in a number of professional development initiatives that have centred on the environment. Our staff spiritual formation day last Term centred around Laudato Si, the holy writings of Pope Francis on how we, as stewards of our Mother Earth care for our environment. This year the staff, led by our environmental committee are working with Beth Riolo from the Catholic Education Office to develop a strategic plan that supports our environmental initiatives at St Anthony’s. In the weeks to come we will be using the newsletter to share some of these important initiatives.

The other important initiative that will occur this Wednesday is ‘Bring A Smile To School’ Day. The theme for this Wednesday is to ‘wear something blue’, or reluctantly I have agreed to something Maroon, due to the importance of this day. (If you are unaware of the importance of Wednesday besides it being World Environment Day, please stop me in the playground and I will enlighten you!) The purpose of this day is for students, staff and parents to simply have some fun. Schools need to be a place of happiness and laughter and hopefully on Wednesday in some small way, we can be reminded of this.

Take Care

Mr Justin Devlin

Principal

Listed below are some important dates for Term 2.

SCHOOL FEES

Please ensure that your commitment to payment of school fees is met as per your School Fee Agreement. All Diocesan School Fee Agreements should have now been returned to the school office. If you have NOT entered into this agreement and you owe school fees then your account must be finalised by this Friday, 7 June. Appointments will be made with Mr Devlin if your account remains outstanding.

Grade Mass 

Year 4 will celebrate Mass on Friday 7 June at 9:30 am in Picton Church.

Assembly

Our next school assembly will be led by Year 1 on Friday 14 June at 2.15 pm

AWARDS

Congratulations to the following students who will receive an award at assembly on Friday 14 June for being a great learner and wonderful community member.

The Vinnies Sleepout provides an opportunity to highlight the great tragedy of homelessness and its impact of this on the well-being of over 250 000 Australians including over 15 000 children under the age of 12. 

This year Ken Bryant has registered as the CEDoW representative in the Wollongong Vinnies Sleepout. Ken will be representing all staff within our educational community.

If you would like to donate to this wonderful cause please click on the link below.

Once again I would like to thank you for your support with this years Book Fair, held last week. A huge thank you to the 34 families who donated books to the school.

Your children will be the first to borrow these books before they are shelved in the library. Your efforts raised almost $1000 which will be used to purchase resources to enhance  and assist in  your children’s learning.  As always the Fair could not run without the support and help of our wonderful parents, a special thank you to Kellie Fiumara, Kellie Cox, Kate Knight and Sarah Batty for their assistance at the Fair. Thank you for your continued support.

I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Cayden O'Connor (Yr3) and his faimily to St Anthony's. We hope Cayden enjoyed his first day and wish him all the best for his time here.