Reminder - school will be closed for students on Thursday 7th November due to staff training day as per our calendar.

Kind regards, School Office

Dear parents/guardians,

From 11/11 to 15/11 the school will close earlier than usual to accommodate our internal assessments. School opening time is as normal and students are expected to go to their base classroom for tutor time, but the school will close each day after period 4. This is 12:39 from Monday to Thursday and 12:35 on Friday. There will also be no after-school clubs during assessment week.

Kind regards, School Office

The PSA is happy to announce the return of our Wine Tasting Fundraiser for the school. 

This will take place on Thursday, 21st November at 7:45 pm in Peggy Kelly's.

Book your ticket now via our gofundme link: 

https://gofund.me/0649bd00

Tickets are limited and cannot be purchased at the door on the evening of the event.

If you can't make it on the evening but would like to support the school, a donation of any kind would be appreciated

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you.

From The PSA

Dear parents/guardians,

The school photographer will be visiting the school on 5th and 6th of November. You will be able to purchase class photos.

Parents of first year students will also be able to purchase individual portraits.

Please contact us in case of any questions.

Kind regards, School Office

I am looking for volunteers for our Careers Day on Friday November 22nd between 8:30 and 12:30.

Last year we had 40 different talks for students in all year groups as part of the national college awareness week.

We can't do that without our wonderful parent body so please contact me if you are interested or have a connection to someone who may be interested.

The talks are 30 mins with plenty of time for questions and if you only have the capacity for one talk that's ok too.

I will send a forms survey through the app the week after midterm.

Thank you.

Lorraine Galvin (Guidance Counsellor)

Email: lorrainegalvin@hcetss.ie

Dear Parent/Guardian,

We hope this email finds you all well. We are emailing you with regard to various areas of our school.

Positive Behaviour Routines

Over the course of 2023-2024. Our Positive Behaviour Team engaged with all stakeholders to gather data around what positive behaviour looks like in our school and what protocols support student regulation and engagement in class.

Following analysis of this data, we have devised positive behaviour expectations. Please note that all teachers over the coming weeks will be building these expectations into their daily classroom practice.

The expectations are:

• Students should begin every class having JPIC (Journal, Pen, iPad, Copy) on their desks.
• Their iPads should be face down unless instructed to be used by their teacher.
• Your Turn, Your voice tells students that they all have the right to be heard when they speak so other students are reminded to always listen when another student is speaking.

The co-creation of these expectations was a powerful example of student voice in our school. Well done in particular, to three TYs, Camilo, Donal and Myles who won our student competition with their design of the below visuals (attached in the pdf version).

These visuals will shortly be posted in every classroom in our school and we would ask that you, our parents and guardians support this important work by reminding your child/children of these expectations and by checking in to see how they are engaging with them.

Zeeko Student Presentations and Parent Webinar

Learning how to safely navigate the internet and engaging responsibly with social media are two of the big challenges facing today’s adolescents. On foot of very positive feedback from students, parents and staff, we have again invited Zeeko Education into our school to deliver Internet Safety workshops to all students in our school.

Zeeko will deliver a workshop to all staff and will also deliver an online presentation (via Microsoft Teams) to all parents. The student workshops take place in school on Tuesday 10th, and Thursday 12th September. The parent workshop takes place on Thursday 12th September at 7.00pm. Please see below link to register.

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_Yzg2NzgzMzktMGIzYi00OTc2LWJjNTctMDYwMjViM2Q5YWM4%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22b2607140-4974-4ce5-9bfc-80f245d39f97%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22c0287ed3-897b-4ec8-968d-2dc298c7aa0a%22%7d

The parent seminar will cover such topics as:

• Cyber-bullying
• Inappropriate Content
• Stranger Danger
• Digital Footprint
• Social Media / Excessive Internet Usage

We fully appreciate the challenges of parenting a teenager, maintaining open and positive relationships while also trying to guide, educate and manage around online behaviours, to support your child’s engagement with social media in a healthy way. Mobile phones can sometimes feel like one more battleground. However, as a school, we recommend in the strongest possible terms that your child charges their phone downstairs at night and does not bring their phone with them to bed.

We know that all the research and data emphasise the importance for us as adults having tech-free bedrooms. This is even more important for adolescents whose brains and neural pathways are still very much in development.

Please do also try to find some time in the days after your child’s workshop to chat to your child about the experience and what they learned. We have found over the past few years, that such workshops can sometimes be a great way of opening up the conversation between a child and parent/guardian(s) around online safety, social media concerns etc.

 School Communications

Our school office is open Mondays to Thursdays from 8.20am to 4.00pm. On Friday the office is open from 8.20am to 12.40pm. We have established 7.00am to 5.00pm as the school window for email communications. The purpose of this is to avoid creating an unsustainable email culture in our school thus leading to staff burnout. We need your support with these protocols.

We kindly ask that if you need to contact Alex or a specific teacher via email, you email between the hours of 7.00am to 5.00pm.

Many of us are parents ourselves and understand that this is not always possible with working long days, dropping and collecting kids, after-school activities and sports, evening and bed-time routines etc. However, if you do need to email members of our school in the evening time, we would greatly appreciate that you schedule your email to deliver the following morning from 7.00am onwards.

In terms of follow-up, for any urgent enquiries please always call the office to speak to Alex. For general queries to teachers, we do our best to respond within 48 hours but for some teachers who are teaching full timetables, preparing lessons, correcting student work, leading lunchtime clubs and coordinating after school sports, sometimes this may take a little longer. Your communications are very important to us but please do bear with us around these protocols and expectations.

 School Support

Thank you to all of you who have paid our admin. charge and our annual contribution. We hugely appreciate your support. For any of you who have not yet had an opportunity to pay the annual contribution, we would kindly ask that you do so over the coming weeks.

Please know that it is only through your annual contributions that we can purchase such items as high quality sports, music and science equipment. which we need to ensure that your child receives the best possible educational experience here in HCETSS.

For example. this year we wish to purchase equipment for some new sports that we are looking to offer such as hockey. We also wish to purchase some additional outside furniture to enhance our outdoor classroom experiences.

Our Board of Management suggest a contribution of €275 for your child. If you are in a position to pay more, we would really appreciate this to allow for parents who may not be in a position to contribute this amount.

Your contributions will greatly help to support our efforts to provide the best teaching and learning experiences possible for your child. Contributions are gratefully received via our school app.

Please liaise in confidence with Alex our school administrator if a monthly payment plan to our school works best for you. We fully appreciate that every family's personal circumstances are different. Your support is really needed and hugely valued.

 Wishing you all a lovely weekend and as always, thank you for your continued support.

 Kind regards,

Pádraig Conaty, Principal

Mick Heffernan, Deputy Principal

Dear parents/guardians, 

please see below link to our school library:

https://hcetsslibrary.wixsite.com/website-1

The library is open during the school day and Mondays - Thursdays for after school study.

Kind regards, 

School Office

Dear parents/guardians, 

Our lost and found box in the school office is full. Any unclaimed clothes will be donated to a charity shop before midterm. Please remind your child to check the lost and found if you are missing an item of clothing and/or water bottle.

Kind regards, School Office

Dear parents/ guardians,  

Tomorrow, Friday 25/10, is  One Day Together, Educate Together’s national fundraising and celebration day.   

We will have a Halloween fancy dress day and all students  who wish to participate should bring in 2 euros to give to their tutor for our One Day Together in HCETSS.

One Day Together is where our school communities, start-up groups, past-pupils and families up and down the country hold celebrations and fundraisers on behalf of educational charity Educate Together to ensure that we can continue to open and support our fast-growing network of schools.

Our school is getting involved in the celebrations and we are helping to spread the word about Educate Together’s work and independent NGO and charity. For more information about the work that the Educate Together national office does in opening and supporting equality-based primary and second-level schools, and to find out how to support this important work, please see the information sheet for supporters here. We are also encouraging anyone who wants to donate to Educate Together on our national fundraising day to do so on our official fundraising platform https://www.gofundme.com/f/one-day-together-2024   

 #OneDayTogether is about our network coming together on one day as a community of schools to celebrate what's so unique about Educate Together, our shared values and our democratic and equality-based ethos. It’s a great opportunity for us to come together to support each other, and to celebrate the amazing work Educate Together schools do. 

Kind regards,

School Office

Dear parents/guardians, 

Just a quick reminder that on Friday, 25th October, all classes end at 12.00. The school will be closed for midterm holidays and reopens at 8.20 on Monday 4th November.

Kind regards, School Office