Dear Parents and Carers
Welcome to the 2018 school year at Santa Sabina College. On behalf of all of the staff, I do hope that you all had a wonderful time with your families over the Christmas season. The start of a new school year is ripe with possibilities, joy and energy. May we all work together to achieve the very best for our students – your sons and daughters. Please take the opportunity to visit our Tallong Campus for the Open Day on 4 February for an opportunity to meet other parents, College staff and of course Tallong staff. For parents of new students, it is a very reassuring experience to have before students attend camp.
We have an exciting year ahead of us that could well be captured by the word, “launch”. After a very successful academic year that you will read more about in Santa Scholars, we are preparing for a number of launches beginning in Term 1. We begin this new year with the installation of the beautiful sculpture, by architect and ex-student Nicole Larkin, installed near the grotto on the Santa Sabina campus. Nicole created the birch plywood installation Dynamics in Impermanence for Sculpture by the Sea 2017, for which she was a Clitheroe Foundation Emerging Sculptor Mentorship recipient, and recent winner of the Good Design Young Australian Design Award for Sustainability. The sculpture also won the Stand-alone category of the Australian Timber Design Award 2017. It is strategically placed between St Dominic’s plot and the grotto, as well as being adjacent to Dadirri, our prayer room. So apart from it being a work of art to be observed, it is also a space to step inside and experience.
Veritas Online made a brief appearance at the end of the year with student reports accessible online. Much work has taken place during non-term time, and will continue to do so throughout the year. Our vision is for Veritas Online to be the one-stop shop for parents, teachers and students. It is a parent portal, a learning management system, and an intranet. Haiku will be decommissioned and historical information archived. Veritas Online will allow you to access information specific to your child, as well as general school matters. It is a work in progress but all the early indicators of its ease of use, and applicability are very positive.
The Siena Centre – Stage 1 (landscaped amphitheatre) and Stage 2 (senior learning spaces and senior centre) should be ready for occupation by the end of February. The Senior Centre will be known as “St Catherine’s”, and each learning space will be named after one of the eight pioneering Dominican Sisters who travelled from Ireland on the Martha Birnie, to establish Dominican education in Eastern Australia. We celebrated their 150 year anniversary last year, with Maitland as the first centre of education, followed by Santa Sabina in 1894.
While Stage 2 will have its own official opening – most likely early in Term 2 – Stage 1 will be launched along with the first showing of the new College uniform on 27 February. A change of uniform is a very significant event in a school’s history, as uniforms are a compelling symbol of tradition and identity. Yet uniforms change throughout the lives of schools to reflect broader social change, innovations in fabric technology, and as a way of marking a new stage in a school’s story. This is the case with the Santa Sabina uniform. It is time to dress our students in ways that are comfortable for the climate, offer a degree of choice while maintaining colour consistency, and that look smart and contemporary. Over the years, parents have requested changes to either the colour of shoes, the boys’ uniform, or particular sports outfits. We made the decision that we would not change uniform in a piecemeal fashion, but that it was time to look at it holistically. Our sincere appreciation is owed to the parents, teachers and students who formed the uniform committee to guide the decisions. Our long-standing Uniform Shop managers, Eileen Fisher and Meryl Waters, have done an amazing job in overseeing this project, and are ready to assist parents throughout uniform transition.
Our first IB Diploma Programme cohort also takes off from the beginning of the year, although there has been very solid preparation throughout Year 10. Parents and the broader community will be regularly informed about our implementation by the IBDP Coordinator, Ms Julie Harris. This year our “Middle School” of Years 6-7 has become the Santa Sabina Middle Years Program 6-8, led by our new Director of Middle Years, Holistic Learning, Ms Santina Gambrill. The Middle Years will be located in the 1894 Building, St Elizabeth’s and the surrounding classrooms. We have appointed two teachers to the role of technology leaders – Ms Rosanne Sukkar from the TAS Department, and new staff member Ms Zeina Chalich. Ms Chalich will work largely on the P-5 campus, but will partner with Ms Sukkar for the Middle Years program.
After Term 4 finished last year, Mrs Carmelina Eussen was offered the position by the Sydney Catholic Education Office of Assistant Principal at Marcelin College Randwick for 2018. This was a difficult choice for Mrs Eussen, and for the College as well. It was far too late in the year to recruit for such an important position, and the decision was made to leave that till the beginning of this term. In the interim, Mrs Sharon Portlock, Head of P-5, will assume some of the duties of Head of School 6-12, particularly in relation to parent and student contact. She will be very ably assisted by Mrs Angela Thomas, Head of Teaching and Learning, and Ms Sarah Tynan, Head of Pastoral Care, 6-12. We thank Mrs Eussen for her contribution throughout 2017, and wish her well in her new school. The Marist tradition is one in which she felt very much at home, and so the chance to re-join another Marist community was hard to resist.
The College has entered into an agreement with Sydney Youth Orchestras (SYO). Santa Sabina is now the home of SYO, and music students from across Sydney (including from Santa Sabina) will rehearse each weekend at the College. Mr James Pensini, our new Head of Instrumental Music, is a conductor with SYO and so will be present during these rehearsals. Partnerships such as these enhance the kind of education we can offer to our students, as we bring in expertise from beyond the school.
Finally, I look forward to meeting you at the opening House Masses for parents and staff on either 7 February (Gunagulla, Kurrawa, Mundawora), or 13 February (Teangi, Weelya, Yetinga).
Dr Maree Herrett
College Principal
