It is hard to believe that we are already at our final newsletter for the year. What a wonderful year we have had at St Thomas More's living out our creed and growing together. Some of our highlights include:

• Our classrooms and library being renovated with new paint, autex and new furniture
• Welcoming Fr Anthony to our School
• Mr Owen commencing as our Grounds Maintenance Manager and watching our community garden bed thrive
• Ms Mikkonen taking on the role of Principal for 6 months
• Having over 20 new students join our school
• Raising money at our Colour Run for new bubblers
• Our new format for the Mission Fete
• Having so many clubs on offer from our incredible staff
• Our Choir having their debut at Floriade
• The whole school excursion to Ginninderry to celebrate NAIDOC Week
• Maggie coming to our school while Annie was on a trip and then having two Wellbeing Dogs in Term 4 
• The Parish of St Thomas More's 60^th Anniversary

Welcoming New Families in 2025    

To support our new families with students from Years 1 - 6 in 2025 we will be holding a Meet and Greet Tour on Thursday 30^th January from 2:00-3:00pm. Your children will have an opportunity to see their classroom and meet their new teacher. The clothing pool will also be open for any uniforms you may require. For our Kindergarten families, we will be holding a play date on the school playground on this day from 3:00-4:00pm. Our Kinder families are welcome to come earlier to attend the clothing pool also. 

Staffing News

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Miss Majella-Rose Shanahan to St Thomas More's in 2025. Majella comes to us with over 15 years experience teaching in Catholic Education and the ACT Directorate including as a fulltime Italian teacher at the Yarralumla Primary School Bi-lingual program. Majella will teach The Arts and Italian to all classes and will work in Kindergarten 2 and a half days per week. 

We also welcome Biljana Peresin to the role of Defence School Mentor. Biljana was a defence spouse and had many years of service working for the Department of Defence. As a previous family of St Thomas More's, she is thrilled to be returning to our community to support our defence families. Biljana will be in this role 5 days per week. 

Farewells

As with each year at St Thomas More's, we will be farewelling several students, families and staff. At our Year 6 Graduation last Thursday we were able to formally farewell our Year 6 students and those families who are finishing their time at the school. Our current Year 6 cohort was the perfect example of our transient nature with only one student having attended from the first day of Kindergarten! 

We also farewell many of our families who will be moving to different schools across Australia. Our School Chaplain and Defence School Mentors have been working with these families and their children to ensure a smooth transition to their new school, and we wish them all the best with their move. We know that this does not always mean goodbye as some of you may be coming back to Canberra in a few years and reenrolling!

From our support staff, we farewell Ariana Strmota, Daniel Vido and Danielle Ridgway. Danielle has been DSM with us since Term 3 and has been a great support for our Defence families, setting up sustainable practices that will continue into 2025. Danny has been a CSA with us for 4 years and will be missed by the many students he has supported with his kind, caring nature. We wish Daniel all the best as he completes his studies and embarks on his first year as a classroom teacher. Ariana has also been with us for 4 years in the role of School Chaplain and then taking on time as Classroom Support Assistant and Defence School Mentor. Ariana has been a wonderful addition to our community through the outreach she facilitates in her role and her engagement with our students, staff, families and parish. We will particularly miss Ariana sharing her musical gifts with us where she has built our school choir and accompanied many masses and community events. We wish her all the best as she looks to combine her love of environmental conservations with work.

We also farewell Cassandra Halls, Andrea McQuirk and Benita Fagan from our teaching staff. 

Benita has been a wonderful addition to our staff as PE specialist and has set up programs and resources for this role to continue, including the introduction of Parkour! 

Cassie has been part of the teaching team for 7 years and has thrived at St Thomas More's. We would particularly like to acknowledge her contribution to the leadership of Numeracy in K-2 and the analysis of school based, systemic and national data. We wish her all the best as she makes the move to St Vincent's in Aranda. 

Andrea has been here since commencing her teaching career at the end of 2020. Andrea's commitment to High Impact Teaching Practices and developing her faith through World Youth Day 2023 have seen her grow into an emerging leader in Catholic Education, skillfully taking on the role of Acting Religious Education Coordinator for 6 months this year and being successfully appointed to the role at Sts Peter and Paul in Garran. We know she will continue to inspire minds and nurture hearts of the community at Sts Peter and Paul and wish her all the best as she continues her teaching and leadership journey.

Step up Afternoon

This afternoon our students spent an hour with their teacher for 2025. Ms Mikkonen and I ensured that all students in Years 3-6 had at least one of their friends from their list of five. We would like to remind you that we will not accept requests for consideration for next year's classes as this opportunity was invited over multiple weeks at the beginning of this term.

Our Staff for 2025

2025 School Calendar    

All of our overly organised parents juggling multiple workplaces, schools and extra curricular activities will be pleased to know that the 2025 School Calendar is now live and can be found here and on the Compass app. Our fridge magnets will be delivered in time for the first day of school.

Community Council 2025    

We are pleased to announce two new members of the Community Council Executive for 2025, Joanne Gale (Mum to Jed in Yr 2 and Ben in Kinder) and Abigail Boettcher (Mum to Emmeline in Yr 3 and Jemima in Yr 4). We know that Joanne and Abigail will be great advocates for our community as they support council in living out our creed and continually looking towards growth within our community.

We have also had one parent express interest in forming the Events Working Party 

We wish you all a safe, Holy and relaxing Christmas and New Year and look forward to embarking on the adventures of 2025 before we know it! Our office will be closed from Wednesday 19 December 2024 and will reopen on Thursday 30 January 2025. We look forward to welcoming all returning students on Tuesday 4 February 2025.