Greetings St. Ignatius Families,

Our students continue to develop eager minds, passionate hearts, enthusiastic spirits, and brilliant futures each and every day. Our prayer service this week celebrated the inspirational Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how his life’s work is now our work through our Mission statement.  

January brings Open House season for Catholic schools. We have made a couple of adjustments to our event. This year, we will host a virtual Open House information night on Thursday, January 27th from 6:30 PM -7:30 PM. After the 10:30 Mass on Sunday, March 6th  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! We have recently created a LinkedIn page for our school. Please consider ‘following’ our school on LinkedIn.  

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.  

Please SAVE THE DATE of Saturday, February 26th 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. If you are interested in being a sponsor for this event, please let the office know.  

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 may return to our campus as an after school program as well. Each after school program provider sets a minimum number of registered students for after school programs to operate. With our students largely vaccinated and likely boostered by then 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. Our afterschool programs will follow the same layers of 
mitigation we have in place during the school day.  

As the COVID cases surge due to the Omicron variant, guidance for how to respond to positive cases in our schools is in a perpetual state of change. Thank you for your patience as we weather this round of the pandemic together. The Oregon Department of Education has updated guidance for quarantine and isolation for positive cases and close contacts. Our school sent a letter earlier this week detailing the updated guidance and outlined the ways our school will work with those guidelines. The CDC has recently suggested upgrading from a cloth mask to a KN95 or N95 mask for better protection as proper masking continues to be an effective  mitigation strategy.  Please remember proper masking in and out of school and maintaining social distancing are the best ways to keep our community safe both in and out of school. We are blessed that our school’s vaccination rate is currently 87% of our school population.   

As we discern ways we can use our gifts and talents to build a just and compassionate world, may we be inspired to act.  “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” Matthew 5:6. “For you, Lord, give light to my lamp; my God brightens my darkness.”
​  
Carol Pausz 
Principal