May your advent season continue to be one of faith, hope and love and may you all have a safe and Holy Christmas.

Staffing for 2021:

Principal (Acting): Mrs Caroline (Caz) Perriman (1 hour each day-Instructional Leader-K-6)

Assistant Principal/Learning Support/Numeracy Instructional Leader: Rebecca Cooper

K-2: Penny Lucas: 4 days (Numeracy Instructional Leader 1 day)

Jack Niddrie:  K-2 Monday-Wednesday 9am-1pm. Thursday K-2 9am-12pm and every Friday. Rebecca Cooper will release Penny Lucas for Literacy instructional leader each Thursday.

Year 4: Genevieve Albert

Year 5/6: Donna Wade: 4.5 days (REC-.5) Jack Niddrie:12-3:10pm-Thursday

In addition to this Jack will be working from 1-3:10 pm-K-6 enrichment, additional class support and STEM. 

Classroom Support Assistants:   Ann Burns: Years 3-6 9:30-3pm (5 days)

Jo Birks: Mon-Friday 9:30-3pm-K-2 (5 days)

Fiona Bassingthwaighte- Years K-2 (1 day) Fiona will also be working additional hours per week K-6 as classroom support.

Library: Julie Doolan (2 days)

Chaplain: Hannah Edwards (1 day per fortnight)

Secretary: Leanne Davis (Mon-Thurs) Fiona Bassingthwaighte (Friday)

New Principal: Caz Perriman will be visiting Trinity on Tuesday and meeting the staff and children before heading to the pool for their fun day. We look forward to meeting and welcoming Mrs Perriman to our school.

Positive Behaviour Lunch: On the last day of school,  Mrs Gorham will be providing a hot chip lunch to all the students who have received 5 maroon bands this year. 

Farewell: Sadly, we farewell to some of our staff this year. Sarah O’brien and Victoria (Tori) Corcoran. Sarah and Tori have accepted positions at Lake Cargellico. We thank then for everything they have done at Trinity and we wish them all the best in the west. Jessica Fitzsimmons will return next year for casual relief work.

It was so lovely to see you all back at Trinity this week for the Presentation Night. I’m sure that 2021 will be a very different year to 2020 and all things going to the current plan you will be able to come into the school for school events. We have really missed seeing you around.

This is our final newsletter for 2020 and my final newsletter as Principal of Trinity Murrumburrah. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas and prosperous new year. I hope you all have a great holiday and enjoy the break. I leave you with some extracts from my Presentation night speech.

Who would have thought that 2020 would have been such a bizarre year! The year commenced very smoothly. Little did we know what was around the corner with the swimming carnival and parent meet and greet night being our only community events that parents and families could attend, all year until our Presentation Night.

The events that unfolded due to COVID became a true testament to who we really are as a school and community always focused on our students, their learning and the wellbeing of our families. Our staff quickly rose to the occasion, trialing and setting up learning platforms for our students and remote packs for families who were unable to access the internet from home. The transition from school to home was fast, effective and a smooth transition. It was as though the children were still at school as the lesson structure with conferencing and feedback occurred, daily. After all this, you would think the students’ academic results would have been impacted-but not so in fact the opposite occurred! Upon return to school, we provided additional classroom support and as a result every student made substantial academic progress across the year.  What an outstanding result! Whilst this result was achieved this year it has been also the result of initiatives that have been implemented and resourced at Trinity over several years.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you. Firstly, to our incredible teaching staff. None of this would have happened without your enthusiasm and zest for learning and improving teaching. We are all life-long learners and this mantra is well and truly enacted at our school. I would like to thank each teacher for their hard work and dedication to improve the learning and engagement of our students. You are all so incredibly talented, innovative and creative. As special thank you to our Instructional leaders in Literacy and Numeracy-none of these results would have occurred to this level without your energy and relentless desire to succeed. Penny your knowledge and enthusiasm for literacy has rubbed off on all the Trinity staff as has your wealth of knowledge and eagerness to improve the teaching of numeracy, Rebecca. We are very fortunate at Trinity to be supported by our amazing support staff, Ann Burns, Jo Birks and Fiona Bass.  They go above and beyond. They attend staff development days on literacy and numeracy to ensure they can support the children with their learning and look after the needs of all our students.

To Hannah our Chaplain thank you. From the minute you walk into Trinity you are busy working with the students in your role as Chaplain.

I am extremely grateful to Leanne Davis. As a Secretary Leanne does more than the average secretary. She does so many more tasks than is required of her duty statement. Leanne can be seen attending excursions, driving the Kruger bus, driving children to and from school to as needed, playing mum in sickbay, and of course answering the many requests that front office demands. It is nothing unusual to see Leanne working after hours doing the jobs that she was distracted from during the day. Apart from all of this, Leanne has been a huge support to me as Principal and she has made my job so much easier. Leanne is also ably supported by Fiona Bass Fiona has many skills that enabled her to be our Secretary each Friday as well as LS teacher. Fiona does an amazing job of our website, school zine and newsletter. Apart from this Fiona does many jobs around the school as a parent-catering at functions with the Trinity cookbook being an example of her handy work and she ably assisted Mark Sumich with the phone book. Both our Secretaries ensure the front office is humming and a pleasant place to be.

Helen Stevenson-thank you for all you do to ensure that our canteen has yummy food and the cleverest meal deals and Jen McKay for managing the canteen at recess and the yummy treats.

Jilly Parker-where would we be without you dropping in and out of the school, doing gardening, sewing banners, making wreaths, helping in the library, or feeding the staff morning tea. You are a gem!

I am extremely grateful to my Executive staff. Rebecca and Donna both work tirelessly in their roles at Trinity. Donna ensuring that RE is a focus for our school, the curriculum initiatives are kept current, our liturgies are vibrant and the parish school link is strong. Donna’s flair for Sport, Drama and choir are attributes she willingly shares within the community.

Rebecca and I have worked together for 6 years. We are ying and yang. We both have a very different skillset that we bring to our roles but when teamed together we have a synergy that works together and a shared vision. Beck you work tirelessly as an Assistant Principal, you are incredibly knowledgeable about curriculum and you are extremely creative and innovative in your practice. From the outset we have been fortunate that we have had a very honest relationship built on loyalty, trust and respect. There have been several occasions when you’ve had to step into my shoes and you’ve done so admirably and with ease. I know that you will be an incredible support to Trinity’s new Principal, Caz Perriman.

Father Lolesio-what a joy it is to have you in our community and such an active presence in our school. We are truly blessed to have you and we love you celebrating our liturgies and bringing the scriptures well and truly to life and visiting the classrooms and staffroom. We hope you see Trinity as your second home and you’re always welcome.

To our Community Council-where would we be without you? A very sincere thank you to our past CC especially our chairs-Andrew Kennett, Sam Lenehan and Brendan McKay. To Charlie Lucas our current Community Council Chair-you go above and beyond for our school as have your predecessors. All our Chairs have more than just taken on the role, but they have all done so many extras behind the scenes and continue to do them from grounds maintenance to putting up nativity scenes. To Mark Sumich our Secretary-thank you. Mark is not just an ordinary Secretary he also does many of our more technically complex maintenance and has been known to climb the school buildings like spider man to repair tiles. To Amy Mergard thank you for being our school publicity and promotions person who has provided the most amazing photos for our school website and organises many of our school functions.

We are extremely grateful to our wonderful parents who work hard to fundraise to ensure resources can be continued to be purchased and upgraded as required and to promote our beautiful school. Parents I urge you all to get involved and support the Community Council and our staff.

It is with a heavy heart that I leave Trinity as each one of you is very special to me. It has been a privilege to be a Principal of Trinity and the past 6 years has been extremely rewarding for me. The decision to leave wasn’t easy but I believe that 6 years is a good stint as a Principal in a school. St Bede’s at Braidwood is a very similar school to Trinity but much bigger and I’m going to be so much colder. I may need 2 Katmandu long coats for duty. I will be back out to visit whenever I come to Galong and will continue to come out this way to visit family.

Only yesterday I had these very words said to me by several nearby Principals… We have an amazing state of the art catholic school and are the envy of all the catholic schools in the WR region. Our building refurbishments, academic results and school environs have set a benchmark that they are all envious of and are hoping to replicate.

I leave you with the manta… “It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a community to build a school”.

Have a lovely holiday!

God Bless,

Marylou Gorham