Killeeneen N.S.

December 2, 2009

Dear Parents,

Please note the following:

Christmas Trees

Our Board of Management has joined with Clarenbridge Lifestyle Garden Centre in a small project which could be mutually beneficial. If you decide to buy your Christmas tree at their garden centre, they will donate 5 euro to our school. You must produce the attached voucher, when you purchase the tree. Our Board is in no way pressurising you to purchase at the Clarenbridge Garden Centre, but if you are happy with the quality and value at the centre, we would ask you to use the voucher so that our building fund can benefit. If you are happy with the quality and value and would like extra vouchers for friends, we may have a few extra available at the school.

Christmas Cards

Our Christmas cards will be available very shortly. The children, and indeed the staff, are very excited at the prospect of their arrival! We are packaging them so that each child will receive two packs of 8 cards (i.e. 16 cards). Each pack costs 7 euro so the total cost of the two packs will be 14 euro. The cards that each child gets will be copies of the one that they themselves worked on and completed. If you like the cards, when you get them, and would like to order more, please contact the school immediately so that we can place one more extra order for reprints. If you do not need the cards, please return them to us immediately so that we can make them available to others.

School Uniform
The Board of management has asked me to inform you as to the outcome of our vote on school uniforms. The results were as follows:
116 families voted.
35 expressed a wish to have a school uniform introduced to the school. (30%)
81 families did not wish to have a school uniform. (70%)
The Board of Management has therefore decided that a school uniform will not be introduced into our school.

Strike
As you will no doubt be aware the proposed strike by public sector unions planned for Thursday, December 3 has now been postponed.

Staff Meeting
We postponed our last staff meeting in recognition of the hardship that you as parents, were experiencing at that time. We now propose to hold a staff meeting on Tuesday, December 8 . School will close at 12.30.

Raffle Tickets
Thank you for the great effort that you are making with our first ever Christmas Raffle. The tickets are selling very well. If you can sell extra tickets, please contact Mags and she will make more available.

A special word of thanks to all those sponsored the very generous prizes. Keep our sponsors in mind as you do your Christmas shopping and show your appreciation of their support!

St. Vincent de Paul Society
Many thanks to the people who have given very generously to our collection of toys, non-perishable goods and vouchers. If you have it in mind to make a donation but have not got around to it yet, the last few days are here! Please have all donations made by Monday, December 7, as we will be arranging for the transfer of all of the goods to the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Galway by then.

ICT Grant
Recently we received an ICT Infrastructure grant of 8998.49 euro to help our Board of Management to fit a digital projector, a wireless mouse and keyboard and the necessary electrical connection in each classroom. We will proceed with this work immediately.

Many thanks for all your continued support and help. By working together we can achieve a lot for your children and your school. We have an excellent school and the extra ICT provision will further enhance the state of the art teaching provision in each classroom.

Yours sincerely

_______________
Michael Browne,
School Principal