September/ October Newsletter


We’ve reached the last day of September and our pupils and staff are adapting well to the new norms. The pupils have settled quickly into a school routine and even seem to be enjoying the return to school! We were fortunate to host our First Communion Day before the Level 3 restrictions came into place and we felt that both ceremonies were lovely events. Many thanks to everyone who helped organise the event and a special word of thanks to the Communicants who seemed to have a great day.

We appreciate your support and co-operation to date in these challenging times. Fortunately, we have had no confirmed cases thus far of Covid among pupils or staff. However, in preparation for such an eventuality, I have posted a note on how the school proposes to deal with such instances (see separate post on School News below) and it is in everybody’s interests to alert us at the earliest opportunity of any Covid concerns you may have. I also appreciate that many of you are keeping your children off school if they have minor coughs, head colds etc and we are grateful to you for this. This is leading to an increase in staff sending homework via email and we would be grateful if you could forward an e-mail to us that could be used for home-school communication or future Learning from Home communications in the event of an unexpected School Closure . We would appreciate if you sent this info to us at kilmacrennanschool@eircom.net by Tuesday, 6th October. Please let us know if you have updated your mobile contact numbers.

We kindly request that any outstanding fees owed for the School Book Rental are paid as soon as possible. We provide all School Books for Junior and Senior Infants at a cost of €60 per child and we operate a School Book Rental system for Third to Sixth Classes at a cost of €35 per child (family maximum of €60). This fee includes art and photocopying expenses etc.

We request that names are refreshed regularly on all school items
such as lunchboxes, school jumpers, coats and stationery and, in fairness to
all, that pupils maintain Healthy Lunches. We request that you do not provide
sweets, crisps, chocolate, fizzy drinks, glass bottles etc. Please check our
School Lunch Policy for further details.

We wish to remind you that the School Car-Park is for Staff and School Buses only. The car-park is somewhat busier as we now have a second school bus on the school
grounds each day and we request your co-operation in this regard.

We hope that you appreciate that we are unable to meet with parents
in face-to-face meetings as before but we remain available to chat to you if
you have any concerns or queries. The best way to do this is to phone the
School Office in advance and, to avoid disruption to teaching time, the class
teacher or Principal Teacher will return a call at a later stage. We also
request that the School Office is contacted if you are to collect your child
early for an appointment and we will bring your child to the gate. We are
unfortunately not accepting unplanned School Visitors at this stage.

Please feel to contact me if you have any queries,

Yours sincerely,

John Devenney.