Greetings St. Ignatius Families,

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