It’s now been a decade since the very first students of St Aloysius at Chisholm entered the school gates, and it’s time to celebrate.
In its 10 years of operation, the school has grown to now have 615 students, and principal Jeanette Fowles said enrolment is through the roof.
“The area is certainly booming and it’s one of the schools that is catering for young families in our area, it’s a great place, there’s lots of great teachers at the school and lots of good leadership providing great educational contexts for kids,” she said.
This year is Ms Fowles’ third year St Aloysius Catholic Primary School, and she said the school has a lot that makes it special.
“It’s a really vibrant community, we are a multicultural community, which I think is something to celebrate, we’ve got people who have moved into Chisholm mostly, and so it’s about building those community connections as well,” she said.
Students, staff and visitors celebrated the school’s milestone anniversary on Friday, June 20 with a day full of activities like garden designing, learning about St Aloysius and enjoying some trivia, as well as a shared lunch in the playground, a special mass at St Bede’s, and the opening of the new Indigenous cultural garden.
St Aloysius has grown alongside the suburb of Chisholm itself, with housing booming, construction underway on the upcoming Chisholm Plaza shopping centre, and Maitland council starting work on the suburb’s first sportsground.
“Over the course of the last 10 years there’s been enormous changes to St Aloysius and to our local community to be honest, and it’s really a day where we celebrate who we are currently and where we’ve come from, and also the hope for the future about where we will take the school,” Ms Fowles said.
The school’s first principal Suzanne Fern, who attended the celebration on Friday, said from the very beginning the school had students from kindergarten to year six, and it started big with more than 200 students.
“On our first day, we were just reminiscing about that today, it was a visible buzz and everyone was so excited,” she said.
“It had been a race to get uniforms for all the students, to get furniture delivered in time, to have everything ready to open our doors and we put a lot of thought into what we’d do on our first day.
“The staff were just as excited as the parents who were just as excited as the children, and that buzz lasted a long time.”
