From the Principal - Mr Chris Gabbett
Welcome back to Mary MacKillop - our ultimate term of 2019.
At present, we are in the throes of interviewing and appointing staff for the coming academic year. Almost all of the appointments are due to growth which is very satisfying. We will appoint at least two new teachers in the Junior College. One of these posts will be due to an additional class in year 2, 2020, after the Executive Director yesterday gave the College permission to add a stream. It is a real vote of confidence for our mission at the College that we are growing at such a pace.
I am also hoping to start 2020 with a Co-ordinator of Arts and Culture to mirror the outstanding work completed this year by Mr Griffiths as Co-ordinator of Sport. Mr Griffiths has really deservedly been praised by many in the community for the impact he has had, and my goal is that a new appointment will help produce a College musical in 2020, increase participation in strings, choir and ensemble, and really raise the profile of and participation in cultural activities at Mary MacKillop.
We are also advertising for a new Assistant Principal Religious Education to start in 2020. Ms Harrison will be handing the baton on at the end of the term and the new appointment will have a Director of Formation to assist them. I have designed this post to better enable and deliver the separate elements that assist in the development of an active, focussed and vocationally driven citizen. In short - this post is to help our younger students to walk out of the College in year 12 as the type of people we would want to know, or employ, or both.
A huge thank you to the staff and students who have made our two transition activities such a success this week. Our Prep Transition Morning was really lovely and it was such a positive experience to share our College vision with 75 new Prep families. Similarly, it made me so proud to see the way our current students welcomed the newcomers into the school during Moving on Up day on Wednesday.
You will see elsewhere in the newsletter some student led activities of charity, stewardship and community service. These students have led these initiatives themselves with very little outside encouragement. Please do all you can to support them. I had a meeting with some Senior College students yesterday about further service activities that will combine environmental stewardship, improvement of our uniform and raising money for challenged communities. I am so proud to lead a College with such entrepreneurial and compassionate spirit.
We are very fortunate to have had installed three Viewsonic interactive screens into the year six classrooms. These are really impressive devices which have the potential to really improve learning. From 2020, it will only be the Prep classrooms that will not have them. We can then turn our attention to the next phase of building the Senior College.
The College Board has been working very hard recently to get us into a position for our next building programme. Some big priorities are securing a full Senior library, developing an Agricultural Science area and ensuring that all staff have a shared professional work space. A few parents have asked me about the planned rugby oval beside the Ignatius Centre. At present, we are awaiting the town planners to re-zone the land to enable us to complete this. The work is budgeted for and I am pretty secure that we will be hosting games there next winter. You may also have seen the temporary fencing beside the Senior tuckshop. This will be a Marian Chapel, built via the kindness of Mr Lunney and his Building and Construction students.
Thank you very much for continuing to support what we are doing to improve the environment, learning and culture of Mary MacKillop. With your support we will finish 2019 in a really strong position.
