Parents Newsletter – Friday 8th of May.
Dear parents/guardians, Hope you are all safe and well. Now that we have a broad roadmap for easing restrictions we can plan accordingly for our current and incoming pupils over the coming weeks and months. For the remainder of the school year we will continue with distance learning and teachers will upload their weekly work as they have been doing since before Easter. Thanks to all the children who have sent in lovely work to their teachers, a sample of which we will continue to display on the website every week, so keep them coming!
School staff will be able to access their classrooms from May 18th (Phase 2) forward and over the following weeks we will get additional materials out to parents of all classes, (Junior and Senior Infants, First and second Classes) , including workbooks, copies, readers and portfolios of work already done this year, in a safe staggered way, observing full social distancing.
We are aware that many of our second classes would be normally looking forward to their First Communion day at this time and Fr. John will be hosting a special online Mass for all our Communicants, with an input from their class teachers, on Sunday 24th of May@10.30am, so please tune in at that time. We also hope to bring our Second Classes down after 8th of June (Phase 3) in small groups to visit their classroom, collect a token of appreciation from the school and say goodbye to their teacher. This will be done safely and with full social distancing.
The final lifting of restrictions takes place on the 10th of August (Phase 5) so we plan to have our First Confession in the weeks that follow before the children commence in Scoil Aine. It may be in a different format, with a general absolution from the altar and spread over a couple of nights. Our First Communion ceremonies will take place in the weeks after that and again in a safe format given the physical space available in the Church. If that has to happen after school restarts, our teachers will liaise closely with the 3rd class teachers in Scoil Aine to assist with the preparation of the pupils. Our teachers and snas will also liaise in the coming weeks with their counterparts in Scoil Aine, to facilitate a smooth transition for all our second Class pupils.
Our booklists with the name of the incoming teacher will go out via email in early June . Given that our pupils have missed all of term three we will be reducing our school fees for next year by a third and recompensing our Second Classes via Easi Payments. We await the Department directive on school reports next week and they are likely to go out in the same format (email) along with the booklists.
For parents of incoming Junior Infants we will be putting up an online video presentation on the school website before the end of May, with all the practical information you need and we will bring our classes in for familiarisation after the 10th of August.
Thanks to the parents who returned the feedback survey on home schooling last week. If you didn’t already complete it please do so this week as it helps to inform what we are all doing. Click on the following link to access it https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FBF92RS. We will put the results up on our website for all next week.
Thanks for your ongoing co-operation.
Michael Maher.