At St Joseph’s we are truly blessed to have such a wonderful school community. At our Assembly this week Year 4 reminded us to count our blessings. We are blessed to have such a well-designed, contemporary and well-resourced learning space, expansive grounds, excellent teachers and staff who are committed to our student’s success and wellbeing. One of our greatest blessings is our partnership with parents and families. We consider this partnership as crucial in the education of each student and for the school being actively involved in the local community.
On Thursday 9th March we will be having our Parents and Friends AGM and I encourage you to attend. Over the last few years, we have struggled to get an executive together, which is surprising when family attendance at our events is always close to 100% and our school is full of caring and committed people who often chip in and help out when called upon.
We have discussed this often at our P&F meetings and after acknowledging the changing nature of families and schools and evolving ways of working together, we are looking at creating a Parent Engagement Network, this model combines what would have been known as a school board and the school P&F.
Although we have done the groundwork to for the establishment of a school board in 2022, we do not currently have a school board so our P&F would be a place where, with the support of CES and shared knowledge from other schools who have made this change, we can explore and work through the process for a transition from P&F to Parent Engagement Network throughout the year.
We invite you to become directly involved in the establishment of St Joseph’s Parent Engagement Network so we can provide an avenue for parents and families to come together and be informed, consulted, engaged and learn in relation to planning, policy, decision making and educational programs.
Establishing a Parent Engagement Network will assist in:
- developing a positive and affirming community spirit
- supporting the work of the principal and staff
- providing feedback to the principal and staff
- promoting consultation between home and school, parents and teachers
- encouraging parent/family engagement with their child’s learning and school life
- deepening parent/family understanding of teaching and learning programs
- promoting the school in the wider community
- the provision of resources to promote the educational program
The process of establishing the Parent Engagement Network begins with the continuation of our P&F. If you are interested in supporting the St Joseph’s school community and directly helping to shape our schools future, please come along to our P& F AGM on the 9th March and consider taking on an executive positions. We recognise there can be barriers for families to attending meetings, so we will be providing childcare and dinner at our meetings hoping this will make it easier for as many parents as possible to attend.
