Congratulations to the Class of 2018 and to their parents! At the graduation ceremony tonight, the students will receive their diplomas and their final blessings as students of St. John. They are on their way to high-school! These are bitter-sweet moments as we say goodbye but we are also excited and proud to see them successfully continue their journey. To the parents who are graduating their last child at St. John School, I extend a huge thank you for the privilege of your partnership. Our doors are always open, so don’t be strangers!
We are also saying farewell to Mrs. Bodmer who is moving on from St. John School. The following is a note from her:
The last few days the school has been bustling with cleaning activity. Classrooms are being moved and cleaned. XDC is in the process of moving their operations temporarily to Egan Hall. Teachers will be here through next week, continuing to pack up their classrooms for the summer and to attend a one-day wrap-up retreat on Thursday. We will use the retreat day to evaluate our school year, how we met our student achievement goals, and our year-one targets on the accreditation goals and to plan our goals for the next school year. We are very blessed with hard-working, committed teachers. Teaching is a journey that involves a mixture of joy, long days and nights of hard work, patience, delight, frustration, awe, exhaustion, brief moments of peace and at times, what feels like bedlam! St. John teachers and support staff live out our mission and affect the development and well-being of the students in so many ways. They make dozens of unscripted decisions every day, they have to adapt instructional practices and lessons to the changing needs of learners, they create environments that are both safe and challenging, they strive to keep abreast of technological progress and an increasingly fast-paced culture, they collaborate and plan and replan, they help students solve academic problems and huge and small friendship dilemmas and conflicts, they have to show tough love and know when to be gentle. They support one another. They attend school to maintain their certification, they make St. John better and stronger through accreditation goals, and they smile! Thank you, teachers!
I want to thank you for your flexibility, understanding, and support as we continue our capital projects. Construction continues in the Rectory and Quigley. Demolition work in the main school building will begin next week. We are optimistic about opening the extended daycare and preschool spaces in early Fall. We have a number of contingency plans in place, for classrooms and for hot lunch, should the Quigley spaces not be ready for our September 5 opening. It’s too early in the permitting process for the main school building to anticipate an exact opening date for the new K-2 classrooms. Many of you have competed in the current building market and are well aware of the realities with the delayed permitting process. Thankfully we still have our portables. Our contractor, the architects, and the building committee are committed to working to ensure that the impact on students in the Fall is as limited as possible. Expect a more detailed message from the Parish regarding the projects in the near future. Of course, you can also contact me or Pablo with questions about the project.
Congratulations to the track and field and the baseball teams for their successes last week! They both brought home the championships! The CYO sports programs is another example of your commitment to this community. On behalf of the students who run cross-country, play soccer, basketball, volleyball, and baseball, and participate in track and field and their parents, I extend a huge thank you to the volunteers who make it all happen.
Join us for Mass tomorrow at 9am. We will dismiss the students at 10:30am. Become reading and math Superheroes over summer and enjoy many fun-filled adventures!
Beannacht,
Bernadette O’Leary
