Principal’s Corner
January 2010
This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm118:24
Dear Parents/Guardians,
Happy New Year!
We started this new year and school semester with some drama due to our heating situation that resulted in a delay of school opening. Thank goodness for our new Parent Alert System; it made things a lot easier. I am very sorry about any inconvenience; as a working parent, I know how difficult it is to get child care at the last moment. We do have a game plan for January 11th regardless of the heating situation in St. Patrick’s Hall. We will be giving out report cards Wednesday the 13th and have our awards ceremony (5th through 8th grades) on Friday the 15th. Please check our FanFare for all the weekly updates on upcoming pictures, basketball game schedules, lunch menus, and other pertinent information. We update the FanFare weekly and any other information that needs to be updated will be on our website as it happens, including school closing.
Reminder: There is a scheduled holiday this month; Martin Luther King, Jr. King Day is January 18th.
Before I go any further, I want to thank all of you from all of the staff for your generous Christmas thoughts, prayers, and gifts. But more than that, thank you for all of your wonderful support.
We have a Home and School Meeting scheduled January 20. We wish all of you would join us. To make it more convenient for our busy parents, the officers of Home and School have changed our monthly meetings to every other month. Parent involvement is a very important part of our school; we need you.
Our OLPH Science Fair is Jan. 21-22. If you want to see some outstanding work done by our middle schools students, you need to visit our PLC on these days and look at these displays. Every year I am blown away by the incredible products of our students.
January is Family Empowerment Month. We are planning some great parent opportunities for every grade level. Because of the holidays and the late beginning of the new semester, I haven’t been able to finalize all the plans; therefore, some of these may take place in February. The dates I do have confirmed are Family Honor for the 8th grade parents and students on January 29 & 30. This is a wonderful program that we have hosted for a few years. This year it will be at St. Stephen’s Church because our facilities were all booked. We always get great feedback on this program. The information has been out for a while; if you are a parent/guardian of an 8th grade student, this program is worth it. For further information you can contact Mary Pat Haywood. I am speaking to a facilitator for the combined parents of 6th and 7th grade students. He has had a busy schedule and has been out of town. I will get the information out to you after we confirm the date.
We are also working on a program for the 5th grade parents. We did this program with last year’s fifth grade parents and it was very successful. Again, when the date is firmed, we will let you know. Parents of 4th Graders, mark February 10 on your calendar. I have a dynamite facilitator coming in for you; more information will come to you soon. Parents of Kindergarten through second grade, you will be invited to attend mass with your children on on February 5 (end of Catholic Schools Week) and join your children for a fun presentation from a local author (Philip Rogers) of children books. You, too, will be getting more information soon. We hope these activities for Family Empowerment Month will be the beginning of another great tradition at OLPH. It is another step forward in our Strategic Plan of parent involvement and communication.
Fifth and eighth grade students will be taking the TCAP Writing Assessment on February 2. There will be a yellow flyer coming home with the students to explain this assessment and give you more information. This is the second year we are participating in this assessment; we had great results last year.
Catholic Schools Week begins Sunday, January 31. We have exciting plans for the week. Details will come soon, but below is a synopsis of what to expect:
Sunday, Jan. 31—10:00 Mass with a Pancake Breakfast to follow. Students will be participating in the mass and the 7th graders will be helping with the breakfast. The proceeds of the breakfast will go to Doug Owens who is the seminarian that our 7th graders adopted when they were 5th graders.
Monday, February 1—Community Day: Service-Learning/Community Outreach. The following grade levels will be collecting items throughout January for the community programs. (More detailed information will be coming out.) On Monday the students will be presenting their results to representatives of organizations at 10:00 in our gym.
Kindergarten-3rd: Salvation Army
4th-6th Animal Shelter
7th & 8th Ronald McDonald House
Tuesday, February 2—Student Spirit Day and Volunteer Appreciation Day. The students will be out of uniform with some type of OLPH logo shirt. We will have a Spiritual Pep Rally at 2:20 in the gym. All parents are invited. For our Volunteers, there will be a brunch after the 8:15 mass in the cafeteria. Invitations will be sent.
Wednesday, February 3—National Day and Crazy Hair Day. Students will write letters or make cards for military personnel or VA patients. If you have someone in mind who would appreciate receiving one, please submit his/her name and address to us. Also, students may get very creative with their hair that day.
Thursday, February 4—Vocations Day and Crazy Sock Day. A prayer Chain will be made for various religious and lay persons of our community. We are working on getting guest speakers for our students on vocations. Students may get very creative with their socks that day.
Friday, February 5--Culmination Celebration of the week. Grades 3-8 will join St. Jude and Notre Dame in a community mass at St. Peter & Paul Church at 10:00. The mass will be celebrated by the Bishop and co-celebrated by many priests of our Diocese.
(Sorry, there will be no room to invite parents.) Father Ragan Schriver will be addressing the students after mass. They will return to school for a pizza lunch provided by Home and School. The kindergarteners through second graders will be having mass at OLPH with parents invited. There will be light refreshments following the mass and a presentation by Philip Rogers, author of children books on God. They will have a pizza lunch provided by Home and School.
All of the above plans are not completed yet, and more details will be sent out as they become so.
I know this has been a look letter, and I hope I haven’t forgotten anything important. I do want to stress the importance of keeping up with information from your teachers on Parents Web and on the School Website for the community.
Have a wonderful and warm month.
Sincerely,
Jeri McInturff