Dear Parents/Guardians,

Happy New Year to everyone and welcome back to school for our second term of the current school year. Our news is as follows

• The Clare Interschools primary School Quiz will take place here in St. Tola’s next Thursday 17^th January at 7.30p.m. We will welcome teams representing primary schools from all around Clare here to the school. We will have two quiz teams representing St. Tolas and we wish them all the best on the night.

• Congratulations to Ms. Hehir who welcomed a new baby boy to her family in early January. We wish them every blessing.
• There are a small number of school calendars available in the office. They cost €3 each and mark the 40^th anniversary of the opening of the school.
• Hip Hop classes will resume here in the school next week on 15^th January each Tuesday from 2.40p.m.-3.40p.m. There is no registration or joining fee for these classes and you pay as you go. The cost is €6 per class.
• We welcome Isolde Quirante to the school for the coming months. Isolde is on a work placement from the University of Limerick and she is also a past pupil of the school. She will be helping out throughout the school over the coming months. We hope she enjoys her time here with us.
• 4^th class went to St. Patrick’s Comprehensive school today to take part in a basketball and soccer workshop organised by the Leaving Cert Applied Students and the Physical Education department. Our pupils had a great time and really enjoyed the event.
• As we are a green school we are constantly monitoring our waste and looking at ways to decrease the amount of waste we produce. We are asking all pupils to take home all waste from their lunchboxes – food waste, cartons, bottles etc. Most of this can be recycled at home either in your compost bin or your recycling bin. In school the only waste we aim to produce are paper handtowels used for drying hands after the bathroom. We thank you for your co-operation in this matter.
• Once again can I please ask all parents/guardians using the car park to exercise extreme caution. A number of cars are stopping to drop off children at the yellow box. This is causing a traffic jam with cars having to queue right out to the road and beyond to enter the car park. If there are spaces please drive into them to allow your child/children to disembark and do not cause an obstruction to other drivers. If there are no spaces please park on the road. Yesterday evening there were several cars parked in the middle of the car park at home time and there were a number of free spaces available. We all want every pupil to arrive and leave safely and it may require a little patience on drivers’ part. We thank you for your co-operation in this matter.

Kind regards,

Mary Dunlea Fitzgerald, Principal