Our Christmas program debuted last night and will air again on Sunday, December 19th at 2:00 PM on our school’s YouTube channel. The link has been sent in a separate email. 

We are so proud of the amazing growth our students have made with in-person learning in the first trimester. Our STAR testing scores show our students have deepened their skills in both reading and math. If you have not already done so, please view your child’s report card on SchoolSpeak, and electronically sign it. If you need a hard copy of the report card to view and sign, please reach out to your child’s classroom teacher.  

The school's readers have stepped up again this year to participate in the Oregon Battle of the Books. We have nine teams across four grade levels! Each team reads the 16 books on the OBOB list and then has fun answering trivia-style questions about each book in battles against each other. In early March, our school's top teams will compete with other local schools in the region! Go SIS Readers! 
 
January 31st is the FACTS deadline to apply for tuition assistance for the 2022-2023 school year. If your family would like to be considered for tuition assistance, please update your information in FACTS and apply for financial aid for the 2022-2023 school year.  

When we return in January, in addition to our monthly fire drills, we will begin having other safety drills for Earthquake, Shelter in Place, and Lockdown. We take great care to help the students understand safety drills. Safety drills help all of us to be prepared to stay safe in any possible emergency situation. We are blessed to be part of a loving, faith-filled community.  

January brings Open House season for Catholic schools. This year, we will host a virtual Open House information night on Thursday, January 20th from 6:30 PM -7:30 PM. After the 10:30 Mass on Sunday, January 23rd, families interested in sending their children to St. Ignatius School may tour the school from 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM. Spread the word to your friends and family about our loving school community! 

Please SAVE THE DATE of Saturday, February 28th for our “Love In Deed” Fundraiser.  This virtual, interactive event will help us build community while fundraising for our school budget into the next year.  

In late January and early February, we will offer some after school program options for families with middle school students. As of now, we will offer two Saturday Academy classes: Digital Photography and Lego Robotics. We will also offer a Chess America class. Muse Band will return to our campus as an afterschool program as well. Each after school program provider sets a minimum number of registered students for afterschool programs to operate. With our students largely vaccinated and vaccinated instructors, this will provide a possible option for our older students allowing parents a later pick-up time and students to engage in a variety of interests.  

In January, our staff will focus on the following uniform guidelines: 

• Proper sizing of clothing 
  
• Wearing non-uniform sweatshirts only outside as a coat 
  
• No hoop or dangling earrings 
  
• No raised adornments on headbands such as cat ears 
  
• Velcro shoes for students in kindergarten through second grade, if the student cannot tie his/her own shoes yet 

If your student is out of uniform, we will notify you via email, and we may ask them to remove the non-uniform item or change into a school provided uniform piece of clothing. Please help us with these guidelines as we come back into uniform codes in January. We may consider a special theme dress day in late January or early February to celebrate the students’ following the uniform guidelines.  
 
At the Feaste of the Nativity on Saturday, our School Advisory Council sold a little over half of the snowmen and Christmas tree ornaments available for sale. The snowmen sold raised $350 for the playground renovation fund. The Christmas tree ornaments sold raised $680 for refinishing the gym floor. In addition, the raffle raised $7,140 in matching funds for the playground renovation project. The church donation from the raffle back to the school will be forthcoming in January. Congratulations to the raffle winners. The top raffle winner was the Diss family, followed by the Nguyen, Jones, and McDermitt families.   
 
As the Christmas holidays are upon us, please adhere to our school's  travel recommendations. We strongly recommend our families follow the CDC guidelines on safe traveling. If your traveling over the holidays is close to our return to school date on Tuesday, January 4th and through an airport or to a heavily populated tourist destination with unvaccinated children, we strongly recommend that you quarantine your unvaccinated child(ren) for a full seven days upon return and take a rapid COVID test 3-5 days after returning. Fully vaccinated students will not need to quarantine upon return from traveling at this time. As a school community, we really must work together on the CDC travel guidance, especially over the holiday season.  

The Oregon Department of Education is actively working with various local health authorities on updating quarantine guidance for close contact exposures along with some other possible suggested changes to current protocols. Once the new ODE recommended guidelines are finalized, we will review what we will implement as a school and provide families with an update at that time. Please remember proper masking and maintaining social distancing are the best ways to keep our community safe both in and out of school. We are beyond thrilled to hear how excited our younger students are as many of them are already receiving their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. If you are looking for possible walk-in clinics for your child, we have compiled a resource list for you. 

May this Christmas season fill your heart with joy and wonder. “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” 
John 1:14 
 
From our hearts to yours, we wish you a blessed and joyful Christmas season!  
Carol Pausz 
Principal

We had a visit from a special guest on Monday as we celebrated the Feast of St. Nicholas this week. The students were so excited to participate in this time honored event! This coming Monday,  December 13th,  students may come to school dressed in their Christmas Sunday Best as classes will be videotaped for our virtual Christmas program. The Christmas program will debut on Thursday, December 16th at 7:00 PM and again on Sunday, December 19th at 2:00 PM. 
 
As report cards are now available on SchoolSpeak, let us take a moment to appreciate the hard 
work of our students and teachers for all of the learning that has taken place so far this school year! 
When you view your child’s report card on SchoolSpeak, please electronically sign it too. If you 
need a hard copy of the report card to view and sign, please reach out to your child’s classroom 
teacher.  
Please note a change to our school calendar from the Archdiocese of Portland Catholic Schools 
Department. As a thank you to all Catholic school staff for their perseverance and dedication to 
Catholic education during these challenging times, Monday, January 3rd has been given to Catholic 
Schools as a day off to show appreciation for all school employees. Therefore, we will resume 
school after winter break on Tuesday, January 4th.    
 
January 31st is the FACTS deadline to apply for tuition assistance for the 2022-2023 school year. If 
your family would like to be considered for tuition assistance in the upcoming school year, please 
update your information in FACTS and apply for financial aid for the 2022-2023 school year.  
At the Feaste of the Nativity on Saturday, our School Advisory Council will host a table. Our SAC 
members will sell two crafts to benefit our playground renovation and gym floor refinishing. The first 
craft is a Christmas tree ornament made from the floorboard wood that was taken out of the gym 
due to water damage from last winter’s storm. Some of our eighth grade students helped to 
decorate those ornaments. Proceeds from the Christmas Tree ornament sale will help to cover the 
cost of refinishing our gym floor including the lines and mascot logo.  Our third grade class made 
adorable snowmen out of the wood rounds from the tree cut down in our prayer garden in 2019. The 
proceeds from the snowmen will benefit our playground renovation project.  
 
There will be a raffle at the Feaste of the Nativity with the top prize of $1000. Only 1,000 tickets will 
be sold for this raffle. Thank you to the many families that sold tickets. An anonymous donor has 
stepped up to match dollar for dollar the amount of raffle tickets we sell. If we were able to sell all 
1,000 tickets, the matching donation would be $10,000! A portion of the proceeds from the raffle 
plus the full matching gift will be donated back to the school to benefit the playground renovation 
project.  On Giving Tuesday, we raised $4,490 dollars for our playground renovation project. Thank 
you to the many families and extended families supporting our school projects!  
Please continue to use the home health screening questions before coming to school each day.  As 
the Christmas holidays are approaching, please adhere to our travel recommendations. As a school, 
we strongly recommend our families follow the CDC guidelines on safe traveling. If you will be 
traveling, through an airport and/or to a heavily populated tourist destination with your children, and 
they are not fully vaccinated, we strongly recommend that you quarantine your unvaccinated child 
for a full seven days upon return and take a rapid COVID test 3-5 days after returning. As a school 
community, we really must work together on the CDC travel guidance, especially over the holiday 
season. Thank you to the families that have partnered with us to keep our school community safe 
from future COVID cases by following this guidance after their recent travels.
 
Cont. 
The Oregon Department of Education is actively working with our local health authority on updating quarantine 
guidance for close contact exposures. We will review the proposed guidelines with our COVID team next week 
and hope to share an update in the beginning of January. Please remember proper masking and maintaining so-
cial distancing are the best ways to keep our community safe both in and out of school. We are beyond thrilled to 
hear how excited our younger students are as many of them are already receiving their second dose of the 
COVID-19 vaccine. If you are looking for possible walk-in clinics for your child, we have compiled a resource list 
for you. 
Please do not drop off restaurant food items for your students during the school day. We have an emergency 
lunch and snack supply to help feed students on those days when lunch or snacks are forgotten, and you are 
unable to bring store bought food items from home. Please remind your students chewing gum is not allowed on 
campus. Let’s keep our campus beautiful! 
 
Our students continue to learn and grow during the month of December. Our preschoolers are making Advent 
wreaths and Christmas trees in addition to cutting shapes developing their fine motor skills. In kindergarten, our 
students are finishing their hallway nativity scene and making their own nativity scenes with empty tissue paper 
rolls. The first graders created a lovely prayer service about the Immaculate Conception of Mary and made beau-
tifully glittered Christmas trees. Our second grade students are learning to tell time on an analog clock and talk-
ing about family traditions. The third graders are crafting strong topic sentences and writing paragraphs. In fourth 
grade, our students are learning long division with remainders. The fifth graders are writing persuasive essays 
about getting a pet. Our sixth grade students are studying plot lines through literature circles.  The seventh grad-
ers are participating in a model United Nations process to discuss an imaginary world issue. Our eighth graders 
continue to learn about force and motion as they engineer balloon-powered planes and baskets. 
May we continue to joyfully prepare our hearts for the coming of our Savior in this third week of Advent. For God 
who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of 
God on the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6 
 
Peace be with you, 
Carol Pausz 
Principal

Thank you to our amazing, generous families for the overflowing Advent gift bags for Community Transition School. What a wonderful way to support children experiencing homelessness in our community. 

We have begun the second window of STAR testing which will continue through next week. Please help your child(ren) to eat a healthy breakfast and get plenty of sleep. STAR testing results will be sent home before Christmas break. 
 
January 31st is the FACTS deadline to apply for tuition assistance for the 2022-2023 school year. If your family would like to be considered for tuition assistance, please update your information in FACTS and apply for financial aid for the 2022-2023 school year.  

As the Feaste of the Nativity approaches on December 11th, our School Advisory Council will host a table at this outdoor event. If your family chooses to attend this event, you may find the SAC table and choose to purchase either of two crafts available. The first craft is a Christmas tree ornament made from the floorboard wood that was taken out of the gym due to water damage from last winter’s storm. Some of our eighth grade students helped to decorate those ornaments. Proceeds from the Christmas Tree ornament sale will help to cover the cost of refinishing our gym floor including the lines and mascot logo.  Our third grade class made adorable snowmen out of the wood rounds from the tree cut down in our prayer garden in 2019. The proceeds from the snowmen will benefit our playground renovation project.  
 
There will be a raffle at the Feaste of the Nativity with the top prize of $1000. Only 1,000 tickets will be sold for this raffle. We have sent home raffle tickets to sell, if you so choose, as part of your fairshare commitment. Thank you to the many families that have sold those tickets and requested more. An anonymous donor has stepped up to match dollar for dollar the amount of raffle tickets we sell. If we are able to sell all 1,000 tickets, the matching donation would be $10,000! Therefore, please return any unsold tickets as soon as possible, so they may be given to another family in need of more tickets to sell. Proceeds from the raffle will be donated back to the school to benefit  the playground renovation project .  We hope to have final numbers from Giving Tuesday to share in next week’s Ignatian. 

Please continue to use the home health screening questions before coming to school each day.  As the Christmas holidays are approaching, please adhere to our travel recommendations. As a school, we strongly recommend our families follow the CDC guidelines on safe traveling. If you will be traveling, through an airport and/or to a heavily populated tourist destination with your children, and they are not fully vaccinated, we strongly recommend that you quarantine your unvaccinated child for a full seven days upon return and take a rapid COVID test 3-5 days after returning. As a school community, we really must work together on the CDC travel guidance, especially over the holiday season. Thank you to the families that have partnered with us to keep our school community safe from future COVID cases by following this guidance after their recent travels.  

The Oregon Department of Education is actively working with various local health authorities on updating quarantine guidance for close contact exposures. We will review the proposed guidelines with our COVID team in the coming weeks and hope to share an update in the beginning of January. Please remember proper masking and maintaining social distancing are the best ways to keep our community safe both in and out of school. We are beyond thrilled to hear how excited our younger students are as many of them have already had their first vaccination shot. If you are looking for possible walk-in clinics for your child, we have compiled a resource list for you. 

Our students continue to learn and grow during the month of December.  Our preschoolers are painting snowflakes, filling Christmas stockings, and writing or drawing Christmas cards. In kindergarten, our students are coloring Advent candles for their wreaths and working on their letter sounds. The first graders continued a long tradition this week as they tied a small bell to one shoe plus crafted their Advent chains. Our second grade students studied The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola and made poinsettia art in addition to their Advent wreaths. The third graders are learning their multiplication tables through familiar tunes such as Jingle Bell 3’s and Old MacDonald 4’s. In fourth grade, our students are making billboard advertisements for the High Desert region of Oregon as they study the regions of the state. The fifth graders are computing and comparing decimals. Our sixth grade students are creating silly stories based on a family or school rule modeling their writing off of the book The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups. The seventh graders are writing a reflection about their own saints. Our eighth graders are studying about the Vatican and ecumenical councils.  
 
May we continue to prepare our hearts for the coming of our Savior in this second week of Advent. 

“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” John 1:9 

​Peace be with you, 
Carol Pausz 
Principal