From the Principal's Desk

Dear Parents and Caregivers

This will be our final newsletter for the term and it is hard to believe that we are almost halfway through the year and what a wonderful way to end the term, with the focus on Wellness this whole week.  Our students and staff have been engaged in so many wonderful activities.  There have been buddy activities, lots of relaxing, deep breathing and mindful movement; a Puzzle & Trivia day; Class Discos; Fancy Fashion  Free Dress Day - with all activities focusing on 'Kindness & Heart Activities'.  The large staff Wellness Team have also been looking after their colleagues wellness with -  'Munchy Monday',  where they organised a Subway lunch; 'Tasty Tuesday' where we began the day with an amazing breakfast and more snacks after our Staff Meeting in the afternoon; 'Thirsty Thursday' where we enjoyed some quality time together drinking some creative mocktails after school and ending the fantastic week with Fashion Friday.  After such an interesting and unexpected three months this last week of term has been a blessing!

All families were sent an important letter in their Seesaw App 'Whole School Announcements' tab.  It details our  move towards  using only one communication portal for all school information, from the beginning of Term Three.  I urge you to check this tab and keep an eye on it on a regular basis once we start the new term.  To make sure all families are supported with this change for the first few weeks of the term,  each time the office upload any whole school communications they will send out an SMS via SEQTA to alert parents to the recent upload.

Semester One Reports are now available on the SEQTA Engage Portal. The reports have been significantly modified due to the recent period of remote learning.  Parents wishing to discuss their child's progress with the class teacher will be invited to do so early in Term Three.

As we should  just be entering into COVID-19 Phase 5 when we begin Term 3, if things continue as they are currently tracking, things will hopefully be looking a bit different.  The recent announcement by Premier McGowan of Phase Four of the WA COVID-19 Roadmap has seen schools adjust accordingly. As the government  has stressed the importance of Western Australians continuing to keep up physical distancing in large gatherings of the 2sqm rule to protect the students and staff, we will begin Term Three following directions from Catholic Education WA.   We are prepared to begin class assemblies from the beginning of Term 3, in a slightly modified format.  They will be held in the Ahern Centre attended by the class performing the item and their family members only.  The expectation at this point is, for family members who do not live in the same home to keep to the 2 sqm.  We will have the chairs set 2 sqm apart to enable the safe distancing for all visitors whilst in the school grounds.

With our current restrictions easing slightly we have decided that we can now have the students attending Mass again. Years 2 to 6 students will be attending one Parish Mass each week starting with our Year Six students.

Certificate Presentations have been revised and our senior students will  be taking over the running of the presentations and live streaming this to all classes.  They will begin with our School Prayer followed by the Acknowledgement of Country and the National Anthem will be sung as well as birthdays being celebrated.  The Leadership Team will read out the certificates and I will continue to hand them out to the students in their classrooms and the teachers will take the photos and upload them to Seesaw for the individual students.

We are currently conducting interviews for enrolment into our Kindergarten 2021 classes so if you, or someone you know, have a child born between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2017 and wish for them to attend Kindy at Liwara in 2021, applications for enrolment should now be completed and forwarded to Karen, our enrolment officer, in the school office.  We are also conducting Pre Kindy 2021  (3 Year Old) interviews  so if your child was born between 1 July 2017 and 30 June 2018 and wish for them to attend Pre Kindy at Liwara in 2021, please ring the office and speak to Karen.

I have some exciting news to share with the community and I am sure you will all be equally as proud of her as we are!  Mrs Anthea Pickering has been seconded to a new Catholic school, St Martin de Porres in Broome,  opening on Monday 20 July 2020.  Anthea will be leaving Perth in the second week of the school holidays to fly up and begin working with the Principal, Mrs Panda Gardner, in setting up all the administrative side of the school and will be there for the remainder of 2020 to get the school running . A wonderful experience for Anthea and the Broome community are very lucky to have her spending six months up there.  Mrs Karen Rosser and Mrs Julie Basso will be working in the office for the remainder of the year with Anthea heading back to Perth in December 2020.

I urge you all to take time to relax and enjoy the company of one another and self.  May you all have a wonderful holiday!

God bless

Andrea Millar