Principal's Update - 4th February 2022

Intro

Dear Families,

It has been wonderful to welcome our students back this week and have the classrooms and playground abuzz with positive energy and the sheer happiness of being back together after the Summer break. To our new families, we hope your children are settling well and are feeling welcomed into our St Columba’s School Community.

Year Ahead Parent Information Night

With continued restrictions to inside gatherings and the inability to invite parents onsite, we will host our Year Ahead Parent Information Night next Wednesday 9th February with live online Q&A sessions.

Each Community will send an Informative Slideshow on Monday 7th February via Seesaw, containing useful information about the year ahead for your perusal prior to Wednesday’s Q&A Sessions. If you have questions or  feel you require further information, please send your questions via Seesaw through to your child’s classroom teacher prior to Wednesday’s Q&A sessions.

The Slideshows and Q&A sessions will provide a valuable opportunity to learn more about routines and expectations for the year ahead and clarify any wonderings you may have.

We will send links out for the meetings on the day. The meetings will be staggered to allow families with children across multiple year levels to attend all.

Times for live Q&A sessions:

5:30 pm - Foundation
6:00 pm - Year 1 / 2
6:30 pm - Year 3 / 4
7:00 pm - Year 5 / 6

New School App - SZapp

Technology is constantly evolving and in recent years we have introduced a number of digital forms of communication to (a) reduce paper waste, (b) enable accessibility for families and (c) provide timely information. Effective communication appears to be a balance between getting information to our community in a timely manner and not overloading families with multiple apps and constant updates.

To streamline our communication processes in 2022, we are introducing the Schoolzine platform, using the 'SZapp' as a central parent engagement platform. All Principal Updates and important information will now be distributed via this app. The app will also have quick access links to the school calendar, absences, forms and documents such as the lunch order menu, uniform order forms and the parent handbook (coming soon). 

We will still be using PAM (for permission forms, reports, medical forms (absences can still be submitted through PAM also)), SeeSaw (for classroom learning updates) and Quickcliq (for lunch orders).The SZapp will feature links to each of these platforms for centralised access. 

Please note that the Skoolbag app will no longer be used by St Columba's and can be deleted from your device/s.

To download the SZapp, please follow the instructions in the attached pdf. You can also view further information at https://www.schoolzine.com/szapp-installation. During the download process you will be asked to provide a passcode to access St Columba's School Ballarat. The passcode is 5900.

Our updated website is also coming soon via the Schoolzine platform.

As always, if you require any assistance or have any questions, please contact Emma or Olivia in the school office.

Bambi Afford & Shaun Mohr
Co-Principals