Dear Families,

You will have noticed an increase in Covid notifications over the past week. Today, we have new cases in every class. We have a number of Covid-safe procedures in place in our classrooms – regular hand-washing, using hand sanitiser, we are physically distancing where possible, we have air purifiers in classrooms and masks are available for students to wear if they wish.

We thank our families for their cooperation during this time in keeping up the Rapid Antigen Testing twice a week and keeping children home if they are unwell. There are other nasty bugs circulating around also that are not covid, but have covid like symptoms, these children need to stay home also so that we limit the spread of other infections and viruses as well.

It is very frustrating because in many cases, children with covid are reporting only very mild symptoms. However, please keep in mind that we do have staff and other children here who are vulnerable so unwell children do need to stay home. If they have covid, they must isolate for seven days. If children are unwell without covid, please keep them home until their symptoms resolve. Children who are close contacts can come to school, but must wear a mask if they are aged 8 and over unless an exemption applies.

Remember to report any positive results by filling in the Positive Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Test Self Reporting Form here:

https://dhvicgovau.powerappsportals.com/rapid-antigen-test/

On a lighter note, we were able to celebrate a lovely whole school mass last Thursday. Our children participated respectfully and prayerfully on the day and Father James was very impressed. It was a lovely celebration to start off our new Term.

Our Years 3 and 5 students completed NAPLAN last week. It was our first fully online NAPLAN, which went very well. Mr Mahoney is our NAPLAN coordinator and did a wonderful job getting everything organised so that we could participate without any technological issues.

We hope that our families that are at home and feeling unwell recover quickly.

We will keep our families and children in our prayers and ask that God restores them speedily to good health.

Have a wonderful week ahead,

Sally