Welcome Back!!

September 11, 2009
Dear Parents,

It was great to see all the children once again! So many of them have grown over the summer. Now it’s our job to help them grow both academically and spiritually during the coming school year. To accomplish this, it must be a team effort involving our staff, the children and yes, their parents. If any of these team members falter, our children will suffer the consequences. As always, communication is a key to achieving the success we desire. On this note, if you try to access our Chalksite, you will notice that it no longer exists. Because of the many issues we and many of the other Diocesan schools encountered with this program last year, the Diocese has decided to stop supporting this program. We only received this news at the end of August. As a result, we are changing to Edline and GradeQuick to communicate with our parents. It will take a month to train our staff and allow them time to prepare their webpages and gradebooks. All parents will receive a brief overview of the new program at our Open House on Tuesday, September 29th, along with their passwords to access their children’s grades and the homework calendar. I apologize for the delay, but I believe it is important to provide our staff with some time to become familiar with this program before allowing parents access to it.

Holy Family School is trying to be proactive with the upcoming flu season and the possible outbreak of the H1N1 virus. I have encouraged all our staff to receive the regular flu vaccine at a staff only clinic we have set up at Holy Family School next week. In addition, a Commission member and I will be attending a conference on the H1N1 virus soon. After this conference, we will be taking steps to prepare ourselves for the upcoming flu season. I will be sharing some of these steps with you next week and in weeks to come. At this point, we will be instituting the following precautions:

· All students may bring their own water bottle to school. Please continuously remind your child not to share their water bottles with other students.
· We will be installing paper cup dispensers at our two water fountains for students to use. Too many germs are spread at water fountains by students putting their mouths on the water spouts.
· We will continue to encourage the use of the water dispenser in the cafeteria.
· Your child’s teachers will regularly review with their classes the proper techniques for washing hands and other healthy habits.
· At least once a week Dianne Fiorina, our PE instructor, will spend a few minutes in PE class reviewing healthy habits and techniques with all our students.

I would encourage parents to look at the following websites for further information:
www.flu.gov

www.ascd.org/research_a_topic/h1n1response.aspx

The playground for our young students is completed. The children love it! Stop by and look at it when you get an opportunity. Please remember the PTO Family Picnic scheduled for Friday, September 18th beginning at 5:30pm. All our families are invited to this fun event. A big thanks goes out to the PTO for the Yahoo and Boo Hoo breakfasts for our students on their first day of school. Enjoy Colorscape and the beginning of the beautiful fall foliage.