Jay Sutton: The new man in the top job with a vision of a bright future for St Aug’s.
Since Jay Sutton arrived at St Augustine’s College, the new principal has received a steady procession of students wandering into his office to say hello and introduce themselves.
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The kids already know him, greeting on sight, “hello, Mr Sutton”. Last week one young girl popped into his office promising to bring him a drawing the next day as a welcome present.
“It’s a beautiful school. It's a wonderful school. It's got great staff, I've felt very welcomed,” Mr Sutton said.
Mr Sutton started at St Aug’s in mid-January, and commutes to work from where he is living in Shepparton. He was living and working NSW for the past five years in a deputy principal role, and before that he was a deputy principal in Perth, where he grew up.
He’s been in the Catholic education system for 22 years, and has been teaching for 29 years. During that time he has also worked in co-ordinator, head of department and deputy principal roles.
Mr Sutton’s background is history, geography and economics, and he has done a fair bit of study in IT, which is the future of education and industry. His vision for St Aug’s promotes a love of learning and growth in the students.
“My vision is very much around growth. So, it's wonderful for our students to be getting As. But if a student’s getting a D and then moves on to a C, then that's showing growth to me,” he said.
That growth will start in Prep and travel all the way through to Year 12, and Mr Sutton’s vision is to maintain that growth as the students move through the school.
The other aspect of Mr Sutton’s vision is the “Christ focus”, maintaining the identity of St Aug’s as a Catholic school, honouring its patron saints and teaching in the Catholic tradition.
But that’s only incidental; by “Christ focus“, Mr Sutton means instilling Christian values such as tolerance, kindness and compassion that students can take forth into life for the betterment of the community.
“Moving away from the ‘how can I benefit myself’, to ‘how we can benefit others’, so very much that social justice focus, and that's a real area that I'm really keen on exploring," he said.
“How can our students serve the community? How can our students give back to the community? Because I have a voice for those who don't have a voice.
“We are Catholic, but there's other cultures out there. There's other religions out there. That's really important.”
Mr Sutton has already fallen in love with the community and is proud to serve at a school that has served generations of Kyabram families.
“Some of the the grandparents of the student I was talking to, they went to the school, their children went to the school, now their grandchildren are going to the school as well. So it's that wonderful community feel,” he said.
"Unfortunately, COVID has played a big role in the impact that community in schools have, especially regional centres.
“Unfortunately, we have had to postpone our events for the first four weeks; our swimming carnivals have been postponed or camps have been postponed. So we can't come together as a community at the moment.
“'It’s almost a whole year that parents haven't been able to come on site. Things like Mother’s Day Mass, Father’s Day Mass, Grandparents’ Day — schools haven't been able to do that.”
St Aug’s has compromised by conducting all school-wide events, such as Mass and assemblies, via Zoom to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission.
“That community engagement is very, very much what we really want to focus on when we can,” Mr Sutton said.
“But we're very hopeful that in the next couple of weeks we'll be able to get more parents on site and we're going to start visiting the classrooms.“
St Aug’s is prepared to deal with COVID throughout the school year in a transparent and proactive way.
“For example, we've had two students (last week) who have tested positive, so the whole community is now aware of that, all our teaching staff and parents are aware of it,” Mr Sutton said.
Other COVID measures include 34 ventilators to maintain air quality, and all students above Grade 3 wearing masks indoors.
“Every student in Victoria gets has has the opportunity to be tested. We've got 750 rapid action tests, which arrived a couple of days ago,” Mr Sutton said.
St Aug’s also has new playground equipment for the Prep to Grade 6 kids, installation of which was completed last week.
State of the art: New playground equipment for the Prep to Grade 6 kids at St Aug’s in Kyabram.
This is part of a significant master plan at St Aug’s, which will see the school complex modified into the shape of a halo, with the church in the middle, Mr Sutton said. The area between the buildings and the church will become open spaces and play areas.
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