Dear St Anne's Community,

Welcome back!

The students have returned to school in a great way and it was nice to welcome our new kindergarten students and new students right across K-12. A warm welcome to all of the new families joining us this year as well. We welcome 34 new students to St Anne's this year, increasing our numbers from 245 to 279. 

We have a number of new staff members this year. Mrs Sharee McKelvie is our new canteen manager. Miss Meaghan King is working with us as a Classroom Support Assistant and Lisa Morton is our new Student Wellbeing Officer. Mrs Tracy Harper will be joining St Anne's later this term as an English/HSIE teacher in secondary. I will be able to inform you about the Cleaner and Maintenance positions in the next newsletter. Thank you to Mrs Claire Maxwell and Mrs Nikki Taylor for joining our secondary team this term. They are valued members of our community. 

I would like to thank Miss Michelle Jamieson for her support over the holiday period as we negotiated various staffing arrangements and timetabling changes. 

Congratulations to all of our elected Captains, Prefects and SRC representatives, I look forward to working alongside you this year. 

Thank you to our community for attending the Opening School Mass, Leaders Induction and Name Change Ceremony today. It was a very special occasion and we appreciate your attendance. We are now officially known as St Anne's Catholic College, Temora and we have a full cohort of students from K-12. Thank you to Mrs Collins and all of our helpers who prepared the town hall for this occasion. Thank you to our office staff for their work in preparing the morning tea. Our theme for 2024 is drawn from our identity statement of Courageous in our Faith and the scripture theme is "Be strong and Courageous for I am with you." Joshua 1:9.

I hope that you are able to join us for the Open Classrooms and BBQ night next Wednesday. 5:30pm-7pm. The BBQ is provided free of charge.

Playground supervision begins at 8:30am Monday-Friday and finishes at 3:30pm of an afternoon. 

The portable classrooms and toilets arrived in the holidays. They have integrated well around the existing buildings. We are making a few changes to the playground to account for the reduction in space. Years 1-12 are now permitted to go over to Fr Hannan oval during breaktime. The school library will also be open both breaks every day. The toilet blocks will become operational next week, with our 7-12 students utilising the 12 new toilet cubicles. 

Thank you to our working bee helpers last Wednesday afternoon. We achieved a lot in a short amount of time. 

The next Community Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 13 February. We will be holding our AGM at this meeting and we welcome anyone who is interested in being a part of this great committee. 

I wish you and your families a happy and successful 2024 and I look forward to seeing you in the near future. Please do not hesitate to contact me, should you have any questions or concerns. 

Take care,

Grant Haigh

Principal