Dear Parents/Carers,

As we approach the end of another very busy and successful Term, I would sincerely like to thank you for your support and encouragement. Term 2 has been very busy with assessment and on Monday this week, digital reports were released for all students in Years 1-9.

Kindergarten parents had an opportunity to meet with teachers in interviews last week and students who are performing exceptionally well across Years 1-9 were acknowledged at our awards assemblies on Tuesday.

My sincere congratulations to all the students who received awards at the assemblies. There is no substitute for hard work and you should be proud of your efforts.

Last Tuesday, Mrs Vella, Miss Christensen and I travelled to the Cube auditorium at the Campbelltown Catholic Club to watch our dance team perform on stage at the MISA Dance festival. It was a wonderful event that saw students from many schools encouraging each other to perform. Well done to Mrs Kells who lead the hard working team of dancers.

Last Thursday, I also had the pleasure of experiencing the ‘LIVE spiritual formation event for Years 7-9 and this was well attended by students and well supported by staff. Students enjoyed live music, food and were challenged by the guest presenter and the Catholic Youth Mission team from Wollongong. I thank Miss Flegg for her organisation of this significant event.

Term 2 has also been busy as it sees the start of planning for 2020. Enrolments for next year are now complete and we are likely to increase our student population from 670 to 860 for 2020. We now look to recruit additional staff to meet the demand.

There has been significant talk this week amongst parents about the safe use of the car park. Each afternoon the school invests in a considerable number of staff being rostered on duty to support the safe and timely exit of students and parents from the College. Afternoons are a priority as approximately 600 students leave the school in the space of 20 minutes.

I believe this is something we do very well, given that most arrive and leave through the one entrance/exit point. In the mornings, families arrive in a more sporadic fashion over a period between 8:00am - 8:30am. At this time there is less congestion and therefore fewer staff providing supervision.

Each staff member has a limit on the number of duties they can do and we prioritise playground breaks. Examples of driving irresponsibly, speeding and ignoring one way signals have been witnessed and I appeal to everyone to please exercise caution and patience when in the College car park. If you witness any bad behaviour please ensure that you report it to a member of the College Leadership Team, as we have the authority to ban people who are acting dangerously from our College car park.

The placement of pedestrian crossings and their signage has also been a topic of discussion. Please note that this is totally out of the College's control. Planning for pedestrian crossings and how they are marked are at the discretion of the RMS and local council.

I am concerned about the number of parents who choose to cross Jardine Drive near our gates which was deemed an unsuitable place for a pedestrian crossing due to the fact it is on the crest of a hill and in one of the highest traffic areas.

Some parents escort their children across the road by simply sticking their hand out and walking in front of incoming traffic. This is a very dangerous practice and I urge any parents who think this is safe, to stop and walk the few extra metres to use the crossing.

Our civil contractors are making great progress on the road construction around the College. Hopefully the current roadworks will greatly improve traffic flow and congestion. The construction of Poziers Road, Byzantine Road and the widening of Vinny Road around the College will create significantly more on-street parking, a second exit point for vehicles and some additional pedestrian access points.

Like everything however, we rely on the use of common sense and the cooperation of our parent community. Thank you to the vast majority of parents who always do the right thing.

I hope you and your children enjoy the student vacation period and that you are able to spend significant time with your family. I look forward to seeing you all when we return on Monday 22^nd July, the start of a very significant term which should see us move into our new Technology, Art & Science Centre. This building will provide an additional 18 fantastic specialist classrooms.

May God continue to bless you.

Mr Simon Abernethy
College Principal

Thank you to all the families that have settled their College Fee Account.

IF YOU ARE NOT RECEIVING REGULAR MONTHLY STATEMENTS PLEASE CONTACT ME IN THE FINANCE OFFICE AT COLLEGE RECEPTION ASAP.

If you have elected to pay by term instalments and haven’t settled your Term 2 College fees, they are overdue and need to be settled as soon as possible.

Families who have selected to pay either fortnightly or monthly, please continue with your regular payments. Payment may be made by Bpay, cheque, cash, EFTPOS or online at our website.

Any parents who have enquiries regarding fees or payments are asked to contact myself at College Reception.  All conversations will be kept strictly confidential.

Thank you for your continued support of St Francis Catholic College.

Mrs Elizabeth Rickard
Finance Officer

On Tuesday 2 July 2019 we held our end of Semester One Award Assemblies for the whole College.

Please see following photos of our award winners for Junior Years:-

Please see following photos of our award winners for Middle/Senior Years:-

Congratulations to all of our Award winners.

I would just like to remind parents/carers of the correct procedure for ordering Bookclub through Scholastic.

All orders are to be made online and payment is to be made online ONLY.
No payments are to be sent to College Reception.

Recently Scholastic decided to extend the cut off date for ordering and any orders placed after the cut off date arrived separately.  This was not how our orders had worked previously and therefore caused many problems.

From now on, the ordering process will have only one cut off date and orders must be placed by this date. Any orders received by Scholastic after the cut off date, will go into the next ordering period.

Each order takes 2 - 3 weeks, from the cut off date, to arrive at the College.

The College orders are delivered as one large delivery, which needs to be sorted into students and classes once it arrives.  As you may be aware there are many orders placed and whilst we appreciate parents' enthusiasm to receive the items, we also hope parents understand that it takes time to process the large orders when they do arrive.

We always endeavour to get each order to each student as soon as possible and your patience is greatly appreciated.

If any items are missing from the delivery, parents will be contacted by the College and will be advised of the new expected delivery date.

Thank you for your support of Book Club.

Mrs Robyn Forbutt
School Support Officer/Librarian

On Thursday 27th June, students at St Francis were invited to experience their second LIVE event of the year, focusing on the theme “Who Is He?”. 

As part of this event, Year 5 and 6 students got to experience a “mini LIVE” in period four, engaging in a game, music and talk. A lunchtime concert followed, with students in Years 3-9 invited to the sails for live music. After school, the final part of LIVE took place with our Year 7-9 students participating in an optional retreat afternoon where the theme “Who Is He?” was explored in greater depth.

Students were treated to milkshakes and cookies for afternoon tea, a game, live music, a talk, small group discussion, worship and burgers for dinner. Whilst we didn’t reach our goal of 100 students, we were pleased to have 85 students and 20 staff in attendance at the optional afternoon session.

Term three sees a break from school based LIVE’s, before a return to St Francis in term four on Thursday 7th November. The theme of this event will be “Who Are We?” and we are excited to announce that our Year 6 students will be invited to join our Year 7-9 students for LIVE afternoon from 3-6pm.

Finally, a reminder for our Year 7-9 students who enjoyed LIVE and want more before term four, the CYMW team run a non-school affiliated event called LIVE Local - a youth group for Year 7-12 students which runs from 7-9pm each Friday night of the school term at St John’s Campbelltown.

Miss Jessica Flegg

This term, students in Years 5 and 6 have been taking part in Science units which focus on the scientific method. As part of their formal assessment, students worked on a project that they presented at the first ever St Francis Science Fair.

This task involved students determining a question they would like to investigate, formulating a method, conducting an investigation, and gathering and explaining the results. As the photos above show, all students did an amazing job!

A huge thank you to all the parents and carers who were also able to attend to support all of the students.

Miss Michelle Linkenbagh
Science KLA Leader

On Monday 24th June, Mr Abernethy and myself had the pleasure of attending the Director's Art Gallery Awards Presentation at the Marian Centre, Wollongong, along with our three talented students, Sarah A, Isabella C and Samuel C.

These students’ artworks were chosen to be exhibited in the Director's Art Gallery for the duration of Term 3.

Monday saw these students present their work to other students, families, friends and employees of the Catholic Education Office, and give a short presentation about their pieces.

It was a very proud moment and a big congratulations goes out to the efforts of our students.

Miss Lauren Cusack
Visual Arts Teacher

On Thursday 27th June, students from Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 attended the Primary Netball Gala Day.

The Netball Gala Day was held at the Minto netball courts and each team played 7 games.  Each team tried their best and showed improvement in their skills. Some of the teams even won a game or two. Well done Senior boys!

The students who attended made St Francis proud by displaying sportsmanship and teamwork.  By the end of the gala day we were exhausted but it was a fun filled day that was enjoyed by all who attended.

We would like to thank all the Year 7 and 8 umpires, parents and teachers who came on the day to help and support.

We also had one of our girls Under 12 team parents present on the day, who has provided a report, please see below.

Mrs Weaver

Parent Report - U/12's Girls Team

I was so very proud of our girls representing St Francis. They followed the umpires direction and behaved with such pride to represent their school. All of the girls shook hands with the opposition team without prompting and congratulated them on the result. They did an amazing job, with only one of the students playing netball outside of school.

All the girls were wonderful however I just wanted to mention a few outstanding performances.  Emily who plays on the weekend, was a leader on the court, and gave the girls positive guidance on & off the court.  Karina who rolled her ankle in the first game of the day, persisted & contributed to the team for the remainder of the day. Heba who showed natural skill and pushed herself to be the best for the team (she really was amazing).

Congratulations to the Girls Under 12 team for an amazing day!

St Francis Catholic College's participation in MISA Dance continued in 2019. 

On Tuesday 25 June a group of 20 students from Years 7-9 travelled to Campbelltown Catholic Club to perform in the annual MISA Dance Showcase. It was a fantastic day and a great opportunity to interact with and view the Dance Performances of various MISA Schools.

The  SFCC MISA Dance Ensemble explored the genres of Musical Theatre, Jazz and Lyrical within the 2019 piece. 'The Greatest Showman Mashup' consisted of a combination of teacher lead sequences and student choreography.

The accompaniment was selected due to its links to our College touchstones and vision action statements of 'Respect' and 'Inclusive Community', as well as it providing a fun opportunity to explore Musical Theatre. The standard of performance was outstanding and our students performed exceptionally well on the day. 

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Mrs Lyons who sewed the costumes and to Miss Flegg who transported the team to the event.

Congratulations again to the St Francis Catholic College 2019 MISA Dance Ensemble.

Mrs Kellie Kells
Leader of KLA - PDHPE

The SEALS Committee have noticed a lot of rubbish amongst the playground. Most of that rubbish being plastic wrappers and packaging. As a team, we’ve discussed different ways we can minimise rubbish waste at SFCC. We have decided to bring back NUDE FOOD DAY!

We will be starting Nude Food Day in Term 3. Each week, the SEALS Committee will pick a day for class and pastoral teachers to check if students have nude food. Nude Food Day will be a day randomly selected each week!

If students have all contents in their lunch box with no plastic packaging, they will receive three house points on their chart/diary. 

There are also class rewards up for grabs! Each week when nude food is checked, for every 5 students in the class that have nude food, the class will receive a ticket in the nude food raffle. For example, if one class has 16 students with nude food, that class will receive 3 raffle tickets for that week into the Nude Food Raffle.

The Nude Food raffle will see one class win a prize towards the end of Term 3. 

WHAT IS NUDE FOOD?

Nude food is simply food that is not wrapped in foil, plastic or commercial packaging. The best type of nude food consists mainly of fresh food, so that it is healthy and nutritious PLUS environmentally friendly. Promoting Nude Food empowers our students to make conscious choices about what they eat, and encourages them to think about their impact on the environment (and their health). You might be amazed with how enthused your child can become on this! Please ensure that any containers are labelled with your child’s name and class so if they are misplaced, they can be returned. 

HOW TO PACK A NUDE FOOD LUNCH BOX

Cutlery from home is better than throwaway plastic cutlery.
Plastic or metal drink bottles are recommended for refilling water.
Reusable containers for putting all snacks and lunches into.
Lunch boxes that have separate sections are helpful.

THINGS TO AVOID

Zip-loc or plastic bags, plastic wrap or aluminium foil.
Single use plastic cutlery.
Pre-packaged food ie. biscuits, snack bars and chips

SFCC have teamed up with the WOODiWiLD organisation to raise money to create a better waste management system and herb/veggie garden in addition to supporting the environment.

The SFCC forest is located south of Wagga Wagga in western NSW. WOODiWiLD is an organisation that has been created with the sole purpose of re-planting trees on farms across Australia to provide habitat for our threatened wildlife and to help address climate change. 

WOODiWiLD have set a goal to plant 1 million trees over the next decade with the help of Australian schools. 

WOODiWiLD is teaming up with St Francis Catholic College to achieve this goal. SFCC has set a goal to plant 400 of these 1 million trees! 

But how do you get a tree in the St Francis Forest?

All you need to do is click on the SFCC WOODiWiLD webpage and follow the link to add a tree to the SFCC forest. The planting of a tree costs $10 and for every tree planted in the SFCC Forest, our school will receive $2. Our target is 400 trees which will see a return of $800 for SFCC to develop a better waste management system and spruce up the herb/veggie gardens.

You receive a unique map reference for your tree and can follow the growth of the tree in the SFCC forest. The website also has some great resources to educate our students about threatened species, different types of tree species and how trees are an important part of our ecosystem in capturing carbon dioxide.

We encourage all to get involved and purchase a tree in the St Francis Forest to support the environment and raise funds for our school along the way.

SEALS Committee

The SEALS Committee are looking for parent helpers to support us in sprucing up our herb & veggie gardens.

We’ve started tidying one of the plantar boxes but have since realised it’s quite a big job. 

We know that many hands make light work, so we’re hoping we can have a few members of our St Francis Community to help with this project.  

If you can spare some time on Tuesday afternoons from 1pm to support the SEALS Committee in rejuvenating the herb and veggie gardens, we would greatly appreciate it.

We are hoping to have an afternoon at the beginning of Term 3.

If you would like to be involved, please contact Miss Jasmina Cox via email (coxj08@dow.catholic.edu.au).

SEALS Committee

Congratulations to Jacob M from Year 3 who recently won a gold medal in Martial Arts Mastkwando Wrestling at the Sydney Taekwondo Festival.

It was a great effort by Jacob to win a national medal, particularly as it was his first tournament.

Well done Jacob!!!!