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 8th 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 14th 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.