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Parents’ Association News: The Parents’ Association (PA) are holding the Annual Halloween Family Quiz in the School Hall on Thursday, 26 October at 7pm. All children attending must be accompanied by an adult. The PA ask for donations for prizes (biscuits, sweets, small vouchers etc). It’s €5 per family for the quiz. Raffle tickets will be sold on the night and there will be a tuck shop too.

Pupil Events:  Well done to all who took part in the School’s Cross-Country event in Milford recently. Our U 9 Boys and Girls, our U 11 Boys and Girls and our U 13 Boys won Team Gold, while our U 13 Girls won team silver medals. Kilmacrennan NS won the Best Overall School Award on the day. The top four runners in each team qualify for the Donegal School’s Cross-Country Finals and this will take place in Inishowen in mid-October.

The school will participate in the Letterkenny District League (Soccer), with the first game scheduled for later this week. The School House Leagues are up and running for Fourth to Sixth with the First to Third Class League scheduled for next term.

Wainfest: A number of classes in our school will attend Wainfest Literary events this month; (details to follow). Pupils in Second and Fifth classes will partake in swimming lessons next term (details to follow).

Parent-Teacher Meetings: The SET teachers will schedule meetings of pupils availing of Learning Support or English as an Additional Language (EAL) in late October, while the PT meetings are scheduled for 23 November.

Board of Management News: We wish to welcome Fr Martin Chambers as the new Chairperson of our Board of Management, and wish him all the best in this role. We too wish to thank Fr Patrick Dunne, outgoing Chairperson, for his much valued dedication and service over the terms of the last two Boards of Management and wish him well in his new post. We too offer our sympathy and condolences to the families of the recently deceased Mrs Anne Gallagher, Churchill (who taught for approximately forty years in our school) and to Fr Conaghan, our former Chairperson.

The four-year term of the present Board of Management is due to end on 30 November. We will be in touch regarding the formation of a new Board shortly, with Parent Nominee meeting on 14 November.

Please note that we post an Agreed Report from each Board of Management meetings under the Parents’ dropbar.

Halloween Holidays: The school will close for the Halloween Holidays at 3pm on Friday 27 October and re-open on Monday 6 November. Pupils are free to dress up in Halloween costume on the day, if they so wish.     

Please note that we post an Agreed Report from each Board of Management meetings under the Parents’ dropbar.

Well done to all who took part in the School’s Cross-Country event in Milford recently. Our U 9 Boys and Girls, our U 11 Boys and Girls and our U 13 Boys won Team Gold while our U 13 Girls won team silver medals. Kilmacrennan NS won the Best Overall School Award on the day.

The top four runners in each team qualify for the Donegal School’s Cross-Country Finals and this will take place in mid-October.

Nuacht Litir na Scoile

September Newsletter

Dear Parent,

I wish to welcome you all for the school year.  The children appear to be settling quickly and we are looking forward to the term.  We particularly welcome all our new pupils, including Ms Hegarty’s Junior Infants Class and new pupils throughout the school.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you of a few issues:

Please note that we call pupils to class each day at 9.20am. We open our school gates from 9am onwards but cannot accept responsibility for pupils who arrive before this time. We therefore request that you do not leave unsupervised pupils at the school gates, whether they arrive by bus or otherwise.

The pupils have a mid-morning and lunchtime break. Lunches are generally eaten in the classroom and we encourage the children to take any litter or wrappings home each day. We respectfully request that our Healthy Lunches policy is adhered to. This means that sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks etc are not sent to school as part of a lunch. We ask that items such as school jumpers, stationery, lunch boxes (anything that moves!) are labelled and that the name tags are regularly refreshed.

The school is operating a No Nut policy.

We request that the school uniform is worn at all times. Teachers will inform you of the day your child is doing Physical Education.

Please provide us with up to date contact numbers, particularly with reference to mobile numbers. We operate a school text service and we will send a greeting to all numbers on our database later this week.  Please inform the school on Monday, 11^th September if you have not received the introductory message.

The school will provide text books and copybooks to all pupils but they are to supply their own stationery. We request a Voluntary Contribution of €20 per child or €30 per family to cover costs such as photocopying expenses, Art materials, First Aid supplies and much more.  We thank those who have already paid this amount and encourage any outstanding fees to be paid in the coming days.

With construction works ongoing at the school, we ask that you pay particular attention to road safety issues and request that your child is accompanied to and from the school gates. Parents are to park in the carpark near the chapel, or along the Main Road, observing normal parking regulations, paying attention to double yellow lines etc.  The car park at the school is for staff and bus parking only. Extra traffic in this area leads to greater risk for pupil and adult safety and we request that this zone remains free of parent traffic. Please relay this information to all adults who drop off or collect your child from school.

We do not allow mobile phones in the school. The school office can relay messages from a parent to a child or from a child to a parent.

All teachers have/are in the process of setting up Seesaw as a means of communication with parents. Please scan or download the app to your phone.

The School Photographer is scheduled to call next Monday, 11^th September.

Pupils from First to Sixth classes are presently doing cross-country training with an athletics meet scheduled in Milford on September 19^th.

We encourage you to contact the school at the earliest opportunity if you have any queries or concerns and we will seek to address any issues at the earliest opportunity. Please note our telephone (0749139295) and e-mail contact details (kilmacrennanschool@eircom.net) or visit the school website at www.kilmacrennanschool.com. Please call the School Office in advance if you wish to arrange an appointment with a teacher. In order to minimise disruption, we often arrange such conversations outside of class teaching hours.

Yours sincerely,

John Devenney.

This note can also be viewed under the School News drop-bar on our website at www.kilmacrennanschool.com

May Newsletter

The last term of the school year is underway at present and the pupils are busy on a number of fronts. The First Holy Communion is scheduled for this Saturday at 11am and we wish Mrs Neely’s Second Class all the best on the day. There will be tea and light refreshments in the School Hall after the ceremony and the Parents’ Association (in conjunction with the parents of First Class) invite the communicants and their families along on the day.

Our recent Kilmacrennan NS 5k was a great success and we wish to thank all those who organised the event, notwithstanding the participants, sponsors, Parents’ Association, volunteers and An Garda Síochána. Your help was greatly appreciated.

Individual class teachers are organising events such as Sports Days and School Tours. Classes will be notified individually of information pertaining to their events. We are continuing with class-based running for 5-10 mins on a daily basis (First to Sixth Classes). We also had a number of pupils participating in an athletics event in Letterkenny this week and we had numerous winners on the day. Well done to all.

Pupils from First to Sixth Classes will undergo standardised testing in English, Irish and Mathematics, starting from the week of Monday 22 May onwards. The results will issue to parents as part of the end-of-year pupil reports in June.

The next Parents’ Association meeting will be held in the school on the 8^th June @8pm. They ask parents to keep an eye on their Facebook Page (Kilmacrennan PA) for the agenda. They also hope to have an ice-cream treat for the pupils during June.

We are experiencing an increase in enrolment applications recently. We have welcomed several new pupils to our school recently but have not been in a position to accommodate all applicants. Please inform the school at the earliest opportunity of any changes in pupil enrolment plans here as it may facilitate the needs of other families.

The government has announced a new Free Books Scheme for all pupils for the next school year. This is to be warmly welcomed but we will be in touch later regarding the details of how it will work for us.

Anne O’ Donnell, our School Secretary, has informed us that she intends to retire from her position at the end of the school year. Anne has been an invaluable member of staff since 1999 and we wish her well. We are planning an in-school celebration of her time here in the school on the afternoon of Thursday 15 June (tbc). All are invited along and we will be in touch regarding the event at a later date.

The Sixth Class end-of-year barbeque is provisionally scheduled for June 14^th but we will confirm this later.

We hold an in-school ‘Kilmac Got’s Talent’ competition each year in which pupils are encouraged to showcase individual/ group talent. The event will be held shortly and we encourage all to participate. It’s a bit like the Eurovision and such was the interest last year that we held auditions.

Without wanting to be too repetitive, I again ask all to pay particular attention to road safety issues and parking in the vicinity of the school. It can get quite busy at times but it is absolutely critical that the vision lines of the pupils at the crossing points are not obscured by cars that park too close by (or by cars parking on the footpath). If feasible, we request that you accompany your child to and from the gate.      

The school will close on Friday 23 June for the summer recess. We will re-open for pupils on Wed 30 August. The 2023/24 School Calendar will be posted on the website in the coming days.

Finally, we seem to be making progress on the proposed permanent ASD two-classroom/ resource extension to the main building. Following a meeting earlier this week, it seems that the builders are planning to be on site towards the end of June. We certainly are looking forward to this.

Yours sincerely,

John Devenney.