Please note that starting from his week, 2nd year students will be doing PE offsite for the remainder of this school term. Students from 2A and 2C will be travelling by bus to and from the Swan Leisure Sports Hall and students from 2B will be using the facilities at Stratford Lawn Tennis Club.  Students must remember to bring their own water as well as suitable clothing/footwear. These activities will take place during their normal timetabled PE lesson times.  

If you are a family of a child going to Harolds Cross Educate Together Secondary school, you might be interested in hosting an international student for short term (1 school term) or long term (the full school academic year)

 What does a host family need to offer??

- A kind, friendly, warm welcoming home

- English spoken as a first language

- A spare room with a bed, wardrobe, desk

- Full board accommodation with Breakfast, packed lunch, evening meal

- Have easy access to local transportation to and from school

- A safe and stable environment

Weekly payment of 185.00 Euro or

Monthly payment of 740.00 Euro.  

If you are interested in hosting please contact LLI ,details below:

Melanie Smullen

Language Links Ireland

Mob: +353 86 061 6289
Email: languagelinksireland@gmail.com
www.languagelinksireland.com

Dear Parent/Guardian, 

We are delighted to inform you that our U16 boys' basketball team have reached their league final. This is a huge achievement for a small school and is testament to the commitment and talent of the students involved and also to all the staff who have coached these students over the past three years. The final takes place on Wednesday 11th Jan and will be against Cabinteely Community School.

As this is the first final that we have reached in our short history, we would like to bring all students and teachers to attend the match as supporters.

The match will take place in Oblates Hall, Inchicore.

We will leave by coach at 9:15am for a 10:00am start. We will be back at school by approx. 11:30am.

Normal classes will take place before and afterwards.

 As this is a particularly special occasion and as a gesture of appreciation to all our families for your continued support, the school will cover full transport costs and entrance fee for all students.

We would greatly appreciate if you could speak with your child in advance of Wednesday around them being ambassadors for our school and our shared expectations when they travel to such school events.

All students are encouraged to wear green in support of our team. 

 Wishing you all a lovely weekend.

 Kind regards, 

Pádraig & Mick

Dear Parents/Guardians,

We hope that this communication finds you well. We are writing to you with regard to various aspects relating to our school.

Orange Weather Warning

As you know, the weather is expected to remain very cold for much of this week. Our avenue, walkways and footpaths will be gritted each morning this week at 6.30am. However, please remind your child/children to exercise caution on their journey to and from school and in and around our school campus. A number of the footpaths around Harold’s Cross were quite hazardous this morning. We would also appreciate if all students could wear warm clothes to school, particularly for the rest of this term. Over the past two weeks, our cleaners have found a number of winter coats, hat and scarves left in classrooms and in the yard at the end of the school day. Please ask your child/children to check the lost property box tomorrow in the main office if they are missing any of these items. Any clothing not claimed by 22nd December will be donated to charity.

Break and Lunchtime 

One of the challenges which we have had this term is with the Department of Education’s reduction in staffing resources for supervision of secondary school students at breaks and lunchtimes. As a result, we do not have adequate supervision resources to safely supervise students across all nine base classrooms as well as our three outdoor yard areas/social spaces. In addition to this, with our interim accommodation, we do not have one large canteen area where students can eat or socialise indoors. This has meant us asking all students to go outside at break and lunchtime when the weather permits. When the weather is wet or cold like this week, students can eat and socialise in their base classrooms for the duration of break and lunchtime. We are meeting with our student council this week to explore more options to ensure that students can relax and have a comfortable break and lunchtime while still being adequately supervised. As well as our lunchtime clubs, we are looking into adding a student-led library to add to the lunchtime recreation options on offer. We have contacted Rathmines Library to support us with this initiative and we may also look for donations of books for this library space from our PSA. We will be in touch about this in the new year. Please note that there is no easy solution to this issue but we do our best to resolve in a student-centred way given the physical facilities and staffing resources that we have at our disposable.

Campus Furniture & Equipment   

A huge thanks to all of you who have made an annual contribution to our school. Your financial support has enabled us to purchase two new outdoor table tennis tables along with additional student picnic tables and benches. Going forward, our campus caretaker Fergus will ensure that the table tennis tables and student seating are stored safely at the end of each day and clean and dry each morning and ready for student use.

Accommodation

Interim

The Department of Education are currently working on the design for the expansion of our interim accommodation to provide additional classrooms and specialist rooms for 2023-2024. We have also requested a prefab as part of next year’s accommodation to be used as a small canteen area for 2023-2024.

Permanent

The tender for the construction of our permanent accommodation went to tender today. We are sending you today a link to share the final version of drawings:

 https://we.tl/t-txmumcRKLR

We will keep you updated when we are notified regarding the appointment of a contractor and agreed timelines and schedule of works.

One Night Only Talent Show

We are very excited that we will be holding our first ever talent show - 'For One Night Only' - on Wednesday 14th December in the Assumption Junior National School, Walkinstown. We have fantastic students across all three year groups who will be taking the stage to showcase their talents. Tickets are limited as the hall is relatively small and we are currently prioritising the families of the students who are performing. All the monies raised will go towards putting on other future productions such as 1st and 2nd year musicals, TY and 5th year plays, concerts etc.  If you would like to attend and support this event, please ask your child to go to Room 13 for the first 15 mins of lunchtime over one the next three days. Tickets are €7 for students and €12 for all others.

UCD Innovation Academy

On Wednesday 7th December, Alan Morgan and David Delaney from UCD’s Innovation Academy visited our school and along with two of our teachers, Evan and Ciara facilitated a design thinking challenge for all of our Third Years. The day finished with a student showcase of ideas on how to enhance the student experience of our school campus. Our Third Year students presented their innovative ideas to all of our school staff, as well as teachers from Blackrock ETSS and Firhouse ETSS not to mention Educate Together CEO, Emer Nowlan. The presentations were superb and our Third Year Student Council reps will now link in with the overall student council to feed back their proposed innovations and action a large number of the ideas. This event was another important step in our school’s partnership with the Innovation Academy and we look forward to future events next year.

New LS teacher

We have recently appointed a new Learning Support teacher. Amie Hughes has joined our school team and will be working in our Additional Support Needs (ASN) Department as a co-teacher in mainstream lessons as well as delivering a number of targeted interventions to smaller groups of students. Her bio will shortly be added to our website.

Vaping

You may have read about the recent evidence review by the Health Research Board that found a strong association between smoking cigarettes and e-cigarette use. Teenagers who experimented with e-cigarettes were five times more likely to becoming cigarette smokers and see their lifespans shorten by between 10 and 15 years as a result. As you may know approval is currently being sought which will ban the sale of vapes and e-cigarettes in Ireland to those aged under 18. Last week in all our SPHE lessons, your child’s tutor focused on this whole area, the health implications of vaping, the law and upcoming legislation as well as our own school’s expectations. In terms of our Code of Positive Behaviour, vaping is treated the same as cigarette smoking and sanctions for students found vaping on our campus include possible suspension. We would encourage all of our parents to discuss this area with your child particularly the health implications, addictive properties of nicotine and potential damage to adolescent hearts and lungs.

Chewing Gum

Please note that we are a chewing free campus, for all staff and students.

Parking & drop off

We wish to remind all parents that it is not possible to drive on to the school campus to drop your child off unless this has been pre-arranged with either a Year Coordinator or our Additional Support Needs (ASN) coordinator. Please contact the office if for mobility or other reasons, you wish to request access to the campus to drop or collect your child. If you drive your child to school, please do not drop off or collect at the main entrance as this impedes the bus lane, bike lane and particularly Harold’s Cross Educate Together National School children who scoot in to school using the footpath.

Attendance and Punctuality

We have seen a big improvement across all three year groups in terms of student attendance and punctuality. We thank you for your continued support in this area. We understand that this is not always easy but please know that by getting your child in to school each morning for 8.05am/8.10am, you are enabling them to start their day ready to learn as well as developing very positive habits for young adulthood and beyond. Please continue to use the school app to notify us if your child is going to be absent from school or late due to an appointment. Any student arriving late to school must sign in at the school office before going to their timetabled lesson.

TY Survey

A massive thank you to all of you who have completed our Transition Year survey. Even if your child is not in current Third Year, please note that your feedback and input is hugely valued and will help to shape our Transition Year Programme for a number of years to come. If you have not yet had a chance to complete the survey, it will remain open until Friday 16th December and only takes six minutes to complete. Please see link: https://forms.office.com/r/caUP4bMqhy

Thank you for your continued support.

Kind regards,

Pádraig Conaty, Principal

Mick Heffernan,  Deputy Principal

Dear parents, guardians,

We are contacting you regarding our campus and car parking facilities.

Our permanent accommodation which is due to commence construction quarter 3 this year will result in our school becoming a car free campus. This was part of Dublin City Council’s conditions for our planning approval.

There are huge benefits of this for us as a school community from a sustainability and green campus perspective and we will actively encourage all staff who live close to our school to walk or cycle to our school each day.

However, at the moment, prior to construction commencing we currently have around 15 car parking spaces available on site for staff who live a significant distance from our school and for whom there is no viable public transport option to help them get in to school each day. Such staff travel into our school each morning from Kildare, Wicklow, North County Dublin and Meath.

The current and future success of our school depends on the recruitment and retention of high-quality staff who believe in our school ethos, our vision for learning and are committed to providing an outstanding second level education to all of our students. To date, we have been fortunate in attracting a superb Deputy Principal and amazing subject teachers and SNAs. As has been well documented in national media over the past number of months, there is currently a significant shortage of second level teachers in Dublin across a wide range of subject areas and we do not want the lack of parking facilities onsite to be an impediment to talented and dynamic teachers who want to teach in our school but for whom public transport options are simply not available.

While we hope that public transport options to Harold’s Cross will improve over the years to come, we urgently need your support and help in the short to medium term.

If you know of any individual, local business, community group or organisation who may have a car parking space or spaces available for members of our staff to use during school hours, we would greatly appreciate if you could forward contact details to office@hcetss.ie. We are eager to identify any such spaces and we have scope to form partnerships with organisations who would like to avail of our sports hall, gym, meeting rooms and conference facilities which will all be delivered as part of our permanent accommodation. We will also explore remuneration options for such individuals or organisations if this would help to secure such spaces.

We would greatly appreciate any help that you can provide.

Kind regards,

Pádraig Conaty                                              

Principal                                                           

First Year Parent Teacher Meeting

Date: 19th January 2023

Time: 4:15pm to 6:45pm

Format: In person at the school

Dear Parent/Guardian/Carer,

As you will be aware, our first-year parent teacher meetings are taking place at the school on Thursday the 19th of January from 4.15pm to 6.45pm. To schedule these appointments, our school will be using the PTM Organiser website.

In our experience, with a year group of this size, the scheduling of appointments ensures significantly less waiting time for parents during the meetings. With many of our teachers teaching 72 students in this year group, scheduling will also help to present realistic options for both teachers and parents in terms of how many meetings can take place. The scheduling of appointments will help to limit the amount of time in which you, the parent, will need to spend at the school site on the evening.

Please follow the steps below to book in your appointment slots for the teachers with whom you wish to meet.

Step 1: Visit the PTMORG website by clicking on the link below

ptmorg.com/parentlogin.php?School=68365A

Step 2: Once you click on this link, you will find that you need to make two entries to continue. The first entry involves the school role number which is 68365A. This should already be prepopulated in the box which says ‘school roll number’.

Step 3:You will also need to input the unique Student ID of your child which can be found on your VSware account. To locate this, you should log into VSware, on the dashboard click on Personal Info and click on School to find the VSware student ID.

Step 4: You can now return to ptmorg.com and log in by inputting the Student ID.

Step 5:Once you login to ptmorg.com, you will be able to choose your preferred appointments. You should enter your preferences by using the up or down arrow in the box to the right of the teacher/subject and by numbering your preferences with‘1’ being the highest preference. If you do not wish to meet a teacher please enter ‘0’ in the box. The system aims to provide you with as many of your higher preference meetings as possible.  Please ensure you hit the continue processing button at the bottom of the page. A notice will then appear at the top of the page telling you that your preferences have been saved. Please do not put the number ‘1’ beside every teacher as this will then result in the system generating meetings on a random basis.

Step 6: Please now logout.

When the programme closes you will be given as many of your top preferences as possible. If you do not get to meet a teacher that you really wish to speak to, please feel free to email the teacher in question and request a call back. It is important to note that many of the teachers at the school have 25 meeting slots but teach over 70 students and this is the reason why it is not possible for you to meet all of your child’s teachers in one evening. Follow up calls can be made on a later date and at a suitable time for all.

Each meeting with a teacher will last a maximum of 6 minutes. This will be the case even if the teacher has your child for more than 1 subject. The bell at the school will sound every 6 minutes.

The window for inputting your choices will close at 8am on Tuesday the 16th of January after which requests cannot be processed. If you do not make your preferences before this time, you will not be scheduled to meet any of your child’s teachers on the evening in question.

The schedule for appointments for each parent will be available to view on Wednesday the 18th of January at 10am. You will be able to view your schedule and the teachers you will be meeting by logging back into the PTMORG website after this time.

We look forward to seeing you at the meetings.

Kind Regards,

Pádraig Conaty, Principal

Mick Heffernan, Deputy Principal

Dear parents/guardians, 

All after school clubs are cancelled today due to 1st years Parent Teacher meeting.

Kind regards, 

School Office

Dear parents/guardians, 

Your parent/teacher meeting schedule is now available to view by logging back into www.ptmorg.com

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

Kind regards, School Office

Dear parents, guardians,

We have just received notification from Irish Water informing us that we may need to close our school tomorrow, 18th January and possibly Thursday 19th and Friday 20th January due to mains rehabilitation works taking place in Mount Drummond Avenue, Dublin 6. The works are scheduled to commence tomorrow morning at 8.00am.

Irish Water cannot say at this point how many households, businesses or schools in our local area will be affected. Our understanding is that the scale of the works involved can only be determined once they access the main pipeline tomorrow morning.

We are asking that all students come to school tomorrow as normal and if we get an update from Irish Water throughout the day regarding our supply being disconnected, we will inform you immediately of any school closure. In the event of a school closure, all students will receive resources and school-work to complete via schoolwise.

We apologise in advance for the potential inconvenience caused.

All students have been informed this afternoon of the situation.

You can check www.water.ie for updates on these works. Reference Numbers for updates are DCC00057795 and DCC000057796.

Thank you for your continued support.

Pádraig Conaty                               

Principal      

Mick Heffernan

Deputy Principal

Dear parents/guardians, 

After school football session with Ger is cancelled today as the pitch is frozen.

Kind regrads, School Office