Principal’s Update – Thursday, 19th October 2023

Good afternoon everyone,

I hope you are all well. I am bringing you my weekly update a little early this week as I have a scheduled personal day on Friday, 20th October and I will not be in school.

Scholastic Book Fair

Our school’s book fair ended yesterday after a very successful week. I would like to thank you, the parents and guardians, for supporting this event. We saw €4,682.11 worth of sales this year (our second best year ever!), which equates to €2,809.27 in rewards for the school in the form of credit for books from Scholastic. These funds will be put to good use in the weeks ahead to expand our classroom libraries and our school library.

Science at St Tiernan’s

Our two 4th class groups have once again been invited to attend science demonstrations in our neighbouring secondary school, St Tiernan’s Community School. Each class will go to two one-hour workshops. The topics of these sessions are ‘The Science of Bounce’ and ‘The Chemistry behind Fireworks’. Today, Katelynn’s 4th class attended the first week of their two-week block and the feedback was extremely positive. We look forward to hearing more about it in the weeks ahead.

Parent nominees sought for the Board of Management (2023-2027)

Next week, we will begin accepting nominations for parent nominees to the new Board of Management. Parents who wish to put themselves forward should email parentnominations2023@ballinteeretns.ie with their name and a short introductory paragraph about themselves. The deadline for doing so is 5pm on Sunday, 5th November 2023. Following the mid-term break, all parents in the school will receive details of the candidates. A confidential online poll on Aladdin will then be set up so that parents can vote for their chosen female nominee and their chosen male nominee. Each individual parent has one vote for both races. I would encourage parents to sign up for Aladdin if they haven’t already done so. The school will clearly communicate the voting window for these two races when the school reopens on Monday, 6th November.

Principal’s update

At Monday evening’s PTA AGM, I delivered a short presentation on developments and activities in the school in 2023-2024. Below are the slides for those who could not attend on the evening.

Wishing you all a pleasant Friday and weekend.

Yours sincerely, Paul O’Dwyer, Principal