Mothers love with all their strength,
All their being, And all their hearts.
Their faith can move mountains when necessary,
and their support encourages others
to reach for the stars!

Happy Mother’s Day
to all of our wonderful moms!

 

                                    May 8, 2008

One More Time

  • Once again we are giving you the opportunity to be a part of our 2008 graduation by making a donation either in your name or in memory of a loved one.  Included in the packet is the Donation Form and we ask you to return it tomorrow Friday so that we can include your name in the program.  Thank you in advance for your generosity.   Graduation Donation Form  
     

  • I am most grateful to all families who have already sent in the Release of Records form so that Mrs. DeLeon can begin to prepare records for mailing.  If you have not yet sent in your form, please send in the one included in this packet.  If you have already sent it in, please disregard this notice. I would love to see every student placed by May 15th.  Of course all financial obligations must be met in order for records to be sent.  Thanks!
     

  • Once again the HSO is sending you the reservation form for the International Food Festival:  a Mass of Thanksgiving and a Celebration of Excellence.  Please be sure to send in your reservation form so that we can plan for adequate seating.  A million thanks.   International Food Festival 

A Call to Courage
During these coming weeks as our final days at SHPS approach all of us are bound to have feelings of sadness, anxiety, uncertainty, and yes, anger and this is when patience & understanding are most needed.  All of us:  parents, students, teachers, staff and even I are experiencing exhaustion and stress as we try to cope with all these negative feelings and at the same time help our children leave SHPS with happy memories that they can take with them.  As we know, sometimes we all can be very unrealistic in our expectations.  I ask all of you (myself included) to pray for the strength and courage to do your best to  keep a positive, respectful approach to one another as we work side by side to bring our time here together to a peaceful conclusion.       In the midst of frustration and worry it is easy to let “tempers fly” and I know that none of our loving, supportive families want to leave a negative impression behind.  I pray for each of you daily and I ask that you do the same for me.

Field Trip
If your child and you have decided he/she will not attend the Field Trip on Thursday, it is a legal liability issue for the school as well as for your child’s protection that I have an absentee note on file whenever a student is not in attendance.    During the last 5 years, whenever a student and his/her parent decided not to attend a field trip, the student has always remained at home the day of the trip even when I expected them to come to school.  This is not something new.  This has happened even though the teacher often took the time to plan assignments.   I also know that many of the students not going on the trip were not planning to attend school.

I am certainly not going to “go to battle” with anyone over an absentee note for this occasion.  If we don’t receive an absentee note on Friday we will just mark it as an illegal absence and send your child to class.

Summer Planning
Although we at SHPS will not be assigning summer work this year, I do want to just remind you of Summer Learning Loss – what happens to a child’s learning during the long summer vacation.  Educators and parents voice three concerns about the negative impact of summer vacation on student learning:

  1. Children learn best when instruction is continuous.
     

  2. The summer vacation breaks the rhythm of instruction, leads to forgetting, and requires significant amount of review in the fall preventing the presentation of new material.
     

  3. The long summer break has a greater negative effect on the learning of children who have difficulty in school.

I suggest that you ask the principal of the school your youngster will be attending whether or not they assign summer work so that your child will not be left out.  Whether or not they do, I encourage you to make sure your child does some reading during the coming summer months.  Mrs. Derry can always provide you with a list of appropriate reading material.

Calendar Reminder:
Next Thursday, May 15th is an 11:15 Dismissal Day for our monthly Faculty Meeting. 
This is in place of Friday, May 9th which is a full school day.

Congratulations to Brittany Bielfeld in Grade 1 who will be receiving her First Holy Communion this coming Saturday at St. Frances de Chantal Church!  God bless!