This week we farewell Mrs Maddie Workman, who has begun her maternity leave a little early due to illness.  Both her and her husband, Tom, are very excited as they plan for the expansion of their family.  We wish the Workmans all the best of luck and look forward to a very exciting show and tell early next term in 3W. Thanks you Mrs Workman for all you have done for our College, and we look forward to welcoming you back with open arms when you return to the classroom!

Over the coming months I will be spending considerable time planning our staffing, class structures, and student numbers for 2026 and beyond.  As the College continues to grow each year, we find ourselves with a variety of challenges.  I am currently consulting with the College Advisory Council as to our timelines of expanding Middle Years from two classes per year level to three, as we continue to have very few spaces, if any, in our Years 5 to 8 for 2026.  As I frequently communicate, the best time for prospective parents to let us know of their interest is now.  This can be via a tour, enrolment, or a casual chat with a member of the Senior Leadership Team.

The reality is that there is a greater need for enrolment at OLSCC than we can currently offer.  While expansion places stress on facilities, classrooms, timetables, and staff, it also means that we can be far more welcoming of new families to the College while still maintaining the safe, supportive and inclusive environment that we currently provide for our community.

Our community is currently being bombarded with illness.  We have vomiting and diarrhoea, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), Influenza B and many others with very similar symptoms.  The attached information sheet provides various information for our community, though in particular I would like to highlight how we as a community can reduce the spread of all these contagions. Collectively, if we can do the following, it will leave our whole community in better health throughout this winter:

• Stay protected by getting your free vaccinations for influenza, COVID-19 and RSV (if eligible)
• Stay at home when sick
• Clean your hands regularly
• Practice good respiratory hygiene by
• Coughing or sneezing into a tissue or the inside of your elbow
• Discarding used tissues immediately
• Cleaning your hands thoroughly

If your child is sick, please keep them at home to recover and emphasise good hygiene to reduce the spread and catching of these illnesses. Students can have up to 14 sick days away from school while still maintaining the attendance standard of 93% or above, so long as they aren’t taking additional days off school without a valid reason. 

We are currently developing a new website for the College.  The intent of this website is twofold – the first to be an initial point of contact to the College for enrolment purposes, and the second as a repository for document storage for incoming and existing families.  This would support existing families by providing access to a wide variety of administrational documents and forms, as well as a comprehensive calendar and newsletter platform.

The intent of this platform is to respond to community feedback regarding communication.  We are striving to make our communication modes more specific, accurate, clear, and useful for both prospective and existing families. 

Now newsletters.  I get it.  They aren’t the most exciting thing in the world.  I understand we are all busy.  I also understand that we need a single point of truth when communicating events, news, details, celebrations, sporting trials, Liturgical information, reflections, general happenings of the College and community news. As we continue to grow in numbers, I also understand that more information is in the newsletter.  I also expect this to increase as we continue to enhance our offerings and achievements at the College.  The newsletter is the one place where we fortnightly publish this information for our community, so they have access to the information they need.  By engaging in our new newsletter platform, we hope to make our newsletter easier to filter and more accessible for our whole community.

It is important to note that 'Sentral for Parent' remains as the app for accessing information about your children, specific camps, permission forms and for absences.  It will continue to hold report cards and various information about your child.  A link to Sentral for Parents will be on the website for ease of access, though as a dad, I access it from the app on my phone so I can get things done on the fly.  We are trialling some additions to the Sentral app for the Diocese shortly which we hope will support our parents with functions such as account balance being available on the app also.

Horizons – digital transition

The Diocese of Toowoomba release a Quarterly magazine 'Horizons' which we have traditionally handed out to all families in the College. While this remains a great read to keep up to date with all the news from the wider Diocese, our last Horizons will be the last distributed in booklet form.  As stewards of God’s creation, the Diocese is reducing our impact by distributing Horizons as a digital magazine for all it’s readers in the future.  We trust that you will continue to click the link and keep up to date with happenings from Stanthorpe to Cunnamulla. 

If you prefer a paper version of Horizons, we will continue to receive a dozen copies of each issue in the College Office, and there will still be some available at St Jospeh’s or in the Parish Office.

Peter Cuskelly