Dear Parents/ Guardians,
As part of our learning in History this month, 5th Class have been learning about the 1916 Rising. As a part of that, we have organised a trip to the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks, next Tuesday. There, we will partake in a tour of the 1916 exhibit.
The plan is that we will get the Luas to and from the museum. The trip will take part of the school day. Your child should pack their books and lunch as for a normal school day.
The price of a return ticket on the Luas is €2.40. We would be grateful if you could send in this amount over the next few days, in advance of the trip, so that we can buy the tickets in advance, for convenience. If, for any reason, you would have difficulty in paying this, please contact Caitríona in confidence.
As always, we will need a parent volunteer to ensure that our trip is a safe and enjoyable one. If you would be available to come along next Tuesday (29th) between 10.20 and 1.45, please fill in the form below.
Thanks,
Aoife

Dear parent(s)/guardian(s),
If you require a permit to park near the front door of the school please fill in the form here. The schools will meet to consider all applications and order them according to the criteria. Please fill in the form by 4pm Wednesday 5th November. New permits will issue by Friday 7th December.
PLEASE NOTE: If you already have a permit, you will need to apply again for the December 2018-September 2019 period. Your current permit will not work after Friday 7th December.

After next Wednesday's application deadline, we will be allocating spaces in that car park as per the criteria set out. We will continue down the list of applications until we fill all spaces.
If your child is collected by a person with a disability or a crèche, please let them know in good time so that they can apply.
Please do not miss the deadline and then ask for special consideration after the process has finished. We will not be able to facilitate that.
All applications will be acknowledged. If you do not get an acknowledgement by Wednesday 5th December, please check that your application was received.
Kind regards,
Caitriona Hand, Principal, Citywest ETNS, and Orla O'Doherty, Acting Principal, CSCNS.

Dear parents and guardians,

We are thrilled and delighted to let you know that the contract for the construction of our permanent buildings started last week. 
ABM were awarded the contract and will start to move equipment onto the campus in the coming fortnight. We expect that building work will start about two weeks after that.


We expect the build to take approx. one year but that, of course, will depend on a large number of factors. We should move in to the new buildings during the 2019/20 school year but it is too early to tell whether it will be early or late in that school year.


The permanent campus for our schools is on the site across the road from our current location, behind the LUAS tracks and on a part of that site that is close to TLC nursing home.
As we were informed in 2015, the Department of Education are the client for this contract and our schools will have very little involvement or influence during construction phase.

We very much look forward to seeing progress on this project and to moving to our new campus during the 2019/20 school year. The two schools will continue to work closely together for the success of the campus.
Kindest regards,
Orla O'Doherty, Acting Principal, CSCNS, and Caitriona Hand, Principal, Citywest ETNS.

Dear parents and guardians,
I write to you to appeal to you in relation to communication. For the second time this school year, we were greeted yesterday morning with concerned parents who had read unpleasant messages about our school and our teachers online, in Facebook and WhatsApp groups set up specifically for parents of children in our school. I am so grateful to those parents for their concern and for their communication. They, and I - and most parents, I think! - dream of a community for our children where grievances are aired in person, face-to-face, in a restorative fashion, where they don't need to fear bullying, where they are given a fair hearing.
Every person in our school is a human being, a person with feelings and a reputation to uphold, a daughter or a son, a mother or a father, a friend, a colleague. We are all human. Collectively, we make a community. In school, we work hard to encourage kindness, caring, looking after one another, believing the best in the other person, trusting that they are working from their truth and from their heart and working together to find a shared truth, a shared plan.
We teach our children about being responsible digital citizens as well as responsible regular citizens. Would we be happy to see a character assassination of a child online? Would we be happy if our child wrote insults or unfounded accusations about another child online? Would we be happy if our child read such comments and did nothing, did not stand up for the absent person being slated? 
I hope that the answer for everyone is "No. No, we would not." So why do we allow adults to do that?!
Citywest ETNS has a robust complaints procedure and we are an open school. Any person who has a concern or a grievance should, in the first place, request a meeting with the person they feel aggrieved by and sit with that person with the aim of sorting things out. If that does not yield results, come to me, School Principal. If you are still dissatisfied, contact the Chairperson of the school's Board of Management. And if you remain dissatisfied, report to the Board of Management.
According to the Department of Education, "placing a once-off offensive or hurtful public message, image or statement on a social network site or other public forum where that message, image or statement can be viewed and/or repeated by other people will be regarded as bullying behaviour". Please be mindful of this when you are engaging in social media of any kind. Before you hit "Send" or "Post", remember to THINK - Is it

• True?
• Helpful?
• Illegal?
• Necessary?
• Kind?

If you see something online that you are not comfortable with, remember what we teach the children - Stop Block Tell:

• STOP - don't reply, take a screengrab
• BLOCK - you can block the person from sending further messages that you will see and/or block them from tagging you
• TELL - tell an authority, tell the person who was written about, report it to admin of the group or to the host of the platform

If you read something online about the school that makes you feel uncomfortable, please take a screenshot and send it to me. I will not tell anyone who reported it to me but it will enable me to invite the person who wrote it in to talk with me and hopefully educate them better about their responsibilities, as well as work to resolve whatever hurt they have.
I know that this is not a comfortable thing to do. But seriously, we are all working together to create a positive world for our children. We tell our children to report when they have a problem or when someone is being unkind. Children learn from what we DO more than from what we SAY. Be the change you want to see in the world. Step up and make the world a better place. 
I sincerely hope that this kind of posting doesn't happen again. Anywhere.
But if it does, I really hope that my inbox is inundated by others who want to help by bringing it to light.


Finally, please realise that, while there are lots of positives on social media, it is an unreliable source of information and you should not believe everything you read there.
I encourage you to read the following leaflets:

• A Parent's Guide to a Better Internet
• How to Deal with Cyber-Bullying

Wishing you all health, happiness and a kind, caring community to exist in, both in real life and online,
Yours in partnership,
Caitriona.

Dear Parents/Guardians,
On Tuesday, 20 November, Fifth Class will be visiting the Gurdwara - a Sikh place of worship. This is a part of our ongoing programme in which we aim to expose the children to authentic educational experiences around all of the main world religions as well as non-theistic belief systems. You may remember that in previous years, the class has visited a church and a mosque.
As part of this visit, your child will be provided with a scarf to cover his/her head and will also have an opportunity to taste foods with significance in the Sikh faith. The foods will consist of Karhaa Prashaad (a sweet semolina confectionary) as well as some vegetarian foods. Please ensure that your child is aware of any dietary limitations that they may have, ahead of this visit.
In order for this year's trip to be safe and successful, we need your help. We need a parent volunteer to accompany the group. If you are available to help out between 10.30 and 1.00 next Wednesday, please complete the form below.

Kind regards,
Aoife, Class Teacher and Learn Together Coordinator
​Caitríona, Principal

What a fast half-term that was! Isn't it hard to believe that we are almost at our October mid-term break already?!
Thank you so much to all those parents and guardians who completed our permission form in relation to photographs. If you have not done so already, please complete it now. It only takes a minute!


Dress-up Day and Cake Sale this Thursday
I am so pleased to see our Student Council and Parents Association come together to arrange our fundraiser and fun day this Thursday. This is the first ever time this type of collaboration has happened in our school.
Our Student Council is inviting everyone to dress up on the day - they will be hosting a competition for the most creative costume! Guidelines for dressing up are the same as last year - please remind yourself of them.
Our Parents Association is organising the ever-popular Cake Sale on the same day and are donating a prize of a Cake Sale voucher to the winner of the fancy dress competition!
The reason the groups have come together is to show support and appreciation to our 6th class pupils, who have led the set-up of our school over the last 6 years. They were our first ever Senior Infants, our first ever 1st class and so on all the way to being Citywest Educate Together NS's first ever 6th class and graduating class!
The 6th class school tour will be a residential trip to an adventure centre. While it is a very exciting prospect, there are, of course, extra costs associated with this trip and our community would like to help with that.
We expect that each class will get a super-dee-duper tour in 6th class and so everyone will eventually benefit from this annual fundraiser.
So get baking and then come and enjoy the sumptuous delights on the day!
Parents collecting their children from school will be able to bring their children to the Cake Sale after collection. Those who won't be here can send money into school with your child and your child will be brought to the Cake Sale during the school day. Please put the money into a sealed envelope with your child's name on it as lost money can be very upsetting for children.


On our website:

• Links to local sports teams children can join
• Pupil Insurance in place for all
• Our new ICT suite is set up!
• New books for all class libraries
• 2nd class teach us about the Five Pillars of Islam at School Assembly
• Events planned for this school year
• Minutes of recent Staff Meetings
• PA AGM report
• Minutes of recent Board of Management meeting
• Our children are ACTIVE - cycling and scooting to school!
• Healthy lunchbox ideas

News from our classes:

• Junior Infants settle in so easily!
• Serious learning in Sarah C's class
• Sarah OT's class play
• Lots of news from Bobby's class
• Claire's class study the skeleton
• 5th class are very busy

Code of Conduct
Each year, please make sure to take the time to review the suite of policies that make up our Code of Conduct. These are the policies that guide all of us in our daily interactions with one another. As a community, we all strive to work together and to support our pupils. As the adults in the community, parents, guardians, staff members and others should hold ourselves to at least as high a level as that to which we hold the children. Children learn by example - while none of us can claim to do everything right all of the time, we can at least own our mistakes, take responsibility for them and work to restore relationships.  Open and honest communication is always a winner!
If you have any suggestions for how to improve any of our policies, do let us know. While policy work itself can be slow-moving, good practice can be implemented sooner than a policy is ready or reviewed. We love to hear your ideas!


Have a lovely mid-term break!
School closes at 2.10pm this Thursday 25th October (after-school classes WILL take place on Thursday) and will reopen at 8.30am on Monday 5th November.
We hope you have a wonderful break together and we look forward to seeing you for the winter half-term!
Caitriona.

The Echo photographer will visit our school tomorrow. Please complete photography permissions if you have not already done so. Thanks.

Dear Parents and Guardians,
Next Thursday, 18th October, Sixth Class will have the opportunity to visit the Mosque.  There, the children will learn about Islam. They will have an opportunity to see some items of significance to Islam, as well as speaking with a leader of the community to ask him some questions.
In order for this trip to be safe and successful, we need your help. We need parent volunteers to accompany the group. We will be leaving the school at around 10.30am and should be back by 1pm. If you are available to help out on the day, please complete the form below.
Thanking you for your continued support.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen, Class Teacher
Aoife, Learn Together Coordinator
Caitríona, Principal

Dear parents and guardians,
Though you completed permissions in relation to photography at school when your child started attending our school, that was before GDPR legislation for most children.
We now require fresh permission in relation to each child. Please complete this form on our school website to let us know your decisions in relation to having your child's photograph taken at school.
If possible, and in an age-appropriate way, it would be lovely to include your child in the decision-making here. This is an important conversation to have with our children in relation to teaching consent and bodily autonomy, as well as making school life easier for your child if they are able to manage their participation in photography opportunities without overly relying on their teacher.
We need a response in relation to every child in the school so please take the time to complete this short form. If you have any questions, just reply to this email to ask them.
Once we have these permissions in place, we look forward to updating the class websites so you can read and see all that we have been learning at school!
Best regards,
Caitriona.