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St Patrick's Primary School, Newtownstewart

Back to School Arrangements

30th Aug 2022

Dear Parent

I hope you had a good summer. Hopefully at this stage the excitement is building and your young one is looking forward to Thursday. Below is some information that might be useful in preparation for our reopening.

Reopening

School will reopen for everyone on Thursday 1st September.

In the mornings, the school gate will be open from 9.00am – please do not send your child in before this time.

Breakfast Club and Milk/Fruit will begin approx. 2 weeks from now so until then please ensure your child has a healthy snack with them for break time.

New Primary 1s

As usual, there will be a limited timetable for P1. They will go home each day at 12.45 (after their lunch) for the month of September. Parents should wait at the pedestrian gate and the Teacher and CAs will bring the children to them.

In the mornings, P1 parents should walk around the outside of the school via the mobile classroom to the P1 classroom, hand over the child to teacher/CA and leave the way they came in.

It would also be a great help if Primary 1 children could be shown how to independently put on and take off their coat and open their lunch box and items of food.

Home times

Mrs Harris’ class home-time will be 12.45 for the month of September and thereafter 2.15pm.

Mrs Sheridan’s P2s will go home at 2.15pm

The remainder of the pupils will leave at 3.15pm.

Miscellaneous

All pupils will return wearing normal full school uniform. We may allow PE kits to be worn on PE days when these are arranged.

All children should have a pair of indoor slippers suitable for indoor and outdoor play – shoes are not ideal for PE. (Old trainers are fine – it is not necessary to buy new slippers for our indoor use)

Pencil cases, book bags & School bags are allowed to be brought to school.

Information about Milk/Fruit, Breakfast Club & After-school clubs will follow next week. Pupils may bring a bottle of water or healthy snack daily – as per our Healthy Eating Policy, no sweets, crisps or fizzy drinks.

Parents, except for P1, should not enter the school grounds. Communication with teachers will only be possible by phone from 3.15-4.00pm, Monday & Tuesday, 3.15-3.30pm all other days. It will not be possible to speak to teachers in the mornings due to the need for them to supervise children getting to class safely. Messages can be passed on by telephoning the secretary, Mrs Comber and the teacher will get back to you.

For health and safety reasons, no parent cars are permitted into the school carpark at any time. Another health & safety concern we have involves the bus in the morning and afternoon. Please leave approximately 3 car lengths outside the gate for the bus to park and the children to get on and off safely.

Money

With parents not permitted onto the school grounds, all money should be placed in a named, sealed envelope with the instruction for it to be given to the teacher as soon as they get into class.

The staff and I look forward to welcoming everyone along with our new P1s and hope that they will have the opportunity to learn lots of new and exciting things in the 2022/23 school year.

In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me by email if you have any queries.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Torney

Principal