Dear Parents 

My name is Damien Kelly and I am Chair of the Mother Teresa School Community Council. Whilst 2021 marked the continuation of some very challenging circumstances, I wanted to take the opportunity to provide you with a summary of some of achievements over the year and to give a sense of some items which will be our focus for the new year. 

The major item of focus was the development of a sensory walk proposal. The Community Council's AGM agreed upon the proposal, which means that we anticipate it will be up and running from the start of the school year in 2022.  I'm particularly proud of the development of this proposal as it began as an idea contributed by parents at the first MTSCC social event of the year (the wine and cheese night whilst the school social proceeded).  The design committee then took on the challenge of researching and deciding upon the best design and materials and seeking to achieve it with the best value for money possible.  I think that it is going to make a significant improvement for the children well into the future and I thank the design committee for all of their hard work developing the sensory walk from a concept to reality. 

The social club has delivered a range of made a fantastic events this year under challenging circumstances.  Its hard to pick out single events, but I think the welcome back to the students from home learning was fantastic.  It was at these events that your contributions helped support our major fundraising target of the sensory walk. 

The development of this year's yearbook has been a major success and was developed following its absence last year.  We marvelled at how Karin Pumpa had previously developed this output on a consistent basis on her own effort.  This year's edition was developed by the significant efforts of Tanya Bolton, Kahla Kruger and Lindsay Pennock.  The MTSCC contributed to the project to assist to keep the cost of the yearbooks down.  We had close to 350 sales, so we consider that to be a major success and we have plans in place to build on that great work next year. 

The traffic and parking issues around the school grounds continued to be another major consideration.  A draft expert report has been produced for ACT Traffic and City Services and we will look assist to implement some if its recommendations into the new year.  I remain optimistic that we'll be able to achieve some successes in this area. 

I'd like to thank all of the volunteers who have kept all of the key functions going, such as the clothing store, Facebook pages and the various sporting activities.  We have reached an agreement to run a 12 month trial of the scholastic book club within the school - keep an eye out in the new year for more information. 

The MTSCC AGM agreed its strategic plan.  This plans reaches out over the next decade, but will also articulate and focus on the key activities for next year (agreed at the first meeting of each school year).  This will include longer term items such as the school building and capital works plans.  By agreeing what we will focus upon will inform the basis of the manner in which we may seek to fund or deliver our proposed initiatives, which we expect to occur through a range of efforts.  We will actively seek feedback early next year. 

From next year, we will have MTS representation at the Archdiocese-wide parent representative body (Catholic School Parents Archdiocese Canberra-Goulburn).  We see it as an opportunity to gain direct access as a parent body to key Catholic Education office executives and to contribute to substantive issues such as topical academic issues and broader funding issues across the Territory.  This body has pretty good representation across a broad range of schools, so we think it will also provide a great opportunity to share knowledge and ideas. 

By around the time that you are reading this, I expect that we will have provided a farewell gift to Peter, on behalf of all parents and members of the MTS community, to thank him for his significant contribution to the school over the past 7 years. We wish Peter all the very best at his new role at Young and we trust that he will take full advantage of the extra time accruing from the shorter commute. 

I want to thank all of the members of the MTSCC executive and the broader committee and other parents & friends who have assisted across the year.  These achievements don't happen without the hard work and support of volunteers, so I'd like to express my gratitude for all of your hard work and your good cheer when doing it.  I'm also grateful to the Peter, Craig (Hart) and Liz (Hagerty) directly as valuable teacher representatives on the MTSCC.  We are also grateful for all of the support more generally from the MTS staff.  

Looking back, I am proud of the achievements that we have delivered over the last year and consider we are well placed to make significant progress on others over the coming years. We'd welcome any further assistance and ideas which we can focus upon in 2022.  Please do contact me if you'd like to discuss anything further. 

I hope that you have a wonderful and safe Christmas break and I look forward to seeing you again in 2022 school year. 

Damien