Dear Parents/Guardians,
Some updates and reminders:
FreshToday
Oven installed and we are all systems go for next Monday! There will be great excitement next week and we encourage all our kids to try out as many different choices as possible! Please remember that the pupils will all get a plastic lunchbox going home on Monday evening so each morning that needs to come back in. That can be their new lunchbox! Otherwise children will be going home with a sloppy paper box!
First Confession
Next Monday evening at 7pm. If the pupils can be there for 6.45pm. There is no need to bring Baptismal Candles. I am still chasing some Baptismal Certs so if you have them at home please send them in to Helena.
Cyber Safety Talk for Parents
This is next Weds. April at 7pm in the school and it will be facilitated by a wonderful speaker from Barnardos. As a staff, we are encouraging all pupils to have a parent/guardian present because many of the difficulties with gaming, social media etc. start in the home and spill into school.
Grandparents' Day
This will be held on Friday May 3rd. We will send out invites next week.
Special Education supports for the children in this school
In February, all schools were granted their Special Education Teaching (SET) hours for next year. These are the hours that we use to give pupils support in reading, writing, spelling, maths, social and emotional needs, behavioural support etc. We got an increase of 7.5 hours per week which help in some small way to meet some needs for some of our pupils. There was an appeal process so we did an appeal and put a lot of time, effort and energy into this. We ended up sending off a 34 page document outlining the needs of pupils in our school and there were certain criteria under which you had to apply.
Yesterday, a letter arrived which stated that the school did not provide the evidence to demonstrate that the application met this criteria. This was extremely frustrating to read as I am not quite sure how much more information or evidence we could have provided.
I am bringing this to local TDs and representatives because I want to know the following:
Who exactly read our 34 page document?
How did they decide our school didn’t meet the criteria?
Who was actually on the review panel and was it merely an administration team who don’t fully understand the needs of schools?
How then do we meet the needs of the pupils who have had professional reports done with recommendations to have supports in school?
How do I tell the parents that their child can’t be prioritised because of the lack of teachers?
How do I support teachers who are already frustrated at not being able to meet the needs of pupils?
I am doing my best to fight the battles for the children in this school because I see the level of need they have. We should have the same resources as other schools near by and more. I understand that there are schools with greater needs than ours but there seems to be a lack of transparency here and when we put so much effort in to get a standard computer says no response it is very frustrating.
I would ask parents to bring this matter to their local TDs and representatives who may end up on our doorsteps in the coming weeks and months! I do think it is time that parents rally together here because as a staff we cannot fight all the battles without parents' support. I would be happy for any group of parents to come together to see how we can bring this idea to the decision makers.
Thanks for reading this,
Enjoy the weekend everyone,
Audrey