Dear Parents/Guardians,

We hope you are well this week as we come to the end of February. Our news this week is as follows

• As announced on Tuesday evening we will partially return to school from next Monday 1^st March. Pupils in Junior Infants, Senior Infants, 1^st and 2^nd classes will return to in person learning at school. Ms Hackett, Ms Burke, Ms Riordan and Ms o’ Neill will return to work in the school. All our SNAs and SET teachers will also return to work in the school.
• Pupils in 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th classes will remain at home and will be supported remotely by their class teacher and SET teachers ( if applicable). These pupils will continue to use the seesaw platform with activities and instructional material provided by their class teacher along with feedback on work submitted. These pupils will continue to have their weekly ZOOM live checkins. Parents can still contact these class teachers on their dedicated emails if you have any question or query. We expect that these pupils will return to in person learning here in St Tolas by the middle of March. As soon as the date is confirmed we will let you know.
• As we are beginning the return to school we will update our COVID 19 Response Plan this week  in line with updated guidance from the Department of Education, the HSE and other bodies. This wil be published on the school webite and all families informed.  I have also attached a useful advice leaflet for parents along with this newsletter.
• Preparations are well underway for the return to school. The school has been thoroughly cleaned by our wonderful cleaner Rima over the past few weeks. All classrooms and common areas including touchpoints have been treated with Zoono. Zoono has been proven to kill all viruses on surfaces for up to 30 days. We are also grateful to Cleanwell who have offered to come into the school and carry out fogging before pupils and staff return to give us extra peace of mind.
• For this week we will have Cruinniu for all pupils tomorrow Friday 26^th Feb at 10a.m. The link will be emailed out with this letter.  
• We are delighted to announce that Maja Kusko in 5th class is a finalist in Shannon Groups Sustainability Garden competition. We are asking all parents to please click on the link below and vote for Maja’s art. Link to vote in competition is :  https://www.shannongroup.ie/community-environment/sustainability/shannon-biodiversity-garden/shannon-biodiversity-garden-competition
• Finally we have some exciting and wonderful news for all in our school community. The Department of Education confirmed last week that they have approved the building of a 2 clsasroom Special Education Base  as an addition to our school building. We will be opening two special classes here in St Tolas. One class will be for pupils with Autism Spectrum Disorder ( ASD)  and the other will be for pupils with Multiple Disabilities. We expect to get the go ahead to open the ASD class before the end of the current school year and hope to open the Multiple Disabilities class in September.

Kind regards, Mary Dunlea Fitzgerald, Principal