Dear Families and Friends,

What a lovely start to the week we had, beautiful sunshine yesterday to greet the last month of Winter but today a rather gloomy grey morning.

With the relaxation of health department guidelines we were so glad to hear from the students about their return to local sport.  Apart from the obvious health benefits that come along with physical activity just as important are the social and well-being outcomes.  Throughout my time as principal you would have read of my keenness to see every single student connected to a local sports club.  To hear from our excited children about their return to community sport post-lockdown only confirms the important role these local clubs play in the lives of not only our children but on families in general.  The connections parents make in these clubs is just as important - so if COVID has taught you nothing else, this year make sure your child is a junior Ram, Cobra, Cougar, Brave or hockey star.  I noticed on social media over this past week that there is an upcoming meeting to organise the reestablishment of junior basketball in Churchill - This is terrific news and I can only encourage our Lumen Christi parents to embrace this opportunity to get involved.

It was terrific to return quickly to normal once the return to face-to-face learning was announced last week.  It shows how used we have grown into the idea of lockdowns and remote learning, which is a good thing but also sadly something we will have to encounter yet again moving forward.  Can I take this opportunity to acknowledge the combined efforts of everyone during RL 5.0 - staff, students and parents.  Plenty of our staff are also parents and grandparents so are appreciative the significant strain lockdowns place on parents.  Without trying to jinx myself, we probably need to be prepared for future lockdowns and be aware for them to happen quickly.  It is worth parents having a backup plan ready in case the school is not in a position to offer content for families to do at home or to be able offer onsite supervision.  Fingers crossed this doesn't happen!

This week we are receiving more updated information about what events we can and cannot undertake.  Parents would have noticed the KABOOM! event removed from PAM which has been postponed but will definitely be rescheduled, but on the positive we have been able to confirm Year 3/4 Camp and Division Soccer.  As always we remain agile and flexible as we work our way through the year.  As staff we are juggling our schedules behind the scenes as most of our off-site meetings return but are conducted virtually.  We are certainly doing less kilometres in our cars but clocking up more onscreen minutes.  

As we push, weave and dance our way through 2021 we also need to be aware of planning for 2022.  Firstly can I congratulate the Year 6 families that have already completed the paperwork for their child's secondary school, as well as thank those families that have completed 2022 enrolments for our Foundation (Prep) students.  Our transition for our pre-schoolers joining us next year has again been interrupted by health department guidelines but we look forward to being able to offer a similar program to last year.  Please keep an eye out for information from the school and we encourage anyone who has yet to complete the enrolment package to do so we can plan for your child's participation in our transition activities.

Dave