Weekly Letter for the Ignatian

Greetings St. Ignatius Families,

As we come to the close of our second week of school, we are grateful for the amazing students and supportive families. With our STAR testing nearly complete, our staff will begin analyzing the data to drive instructional planning. Our test results show, overall, we have strong students ready to learn and stretch themselves toward brilliant futures. STAR testing results will be shared with families during our fall conferences in October. We celebrated our whole school this week with an outdoor assembly to review our recess and uniform expectations. Several staff members helped us to review our uniform guidelines with a ‘what not to wear’ fashion show. We successfully completed our first fire drill of the year on Thursday afternoon as well. 

We have a few reminders for families as we head into our third week of school.  It is extremely important that we work together as a community to maintain safety measures. The students are doing a great job at keeping their masks on and putting them on right away after eating. We need some assistance from home for two safety protocols. First, please do not drop your child off before we open the school at 8:15 AM. The playground is closed before school, and students should not be on the equipment before the doors open. Students arriving in the carline should remain in their car until our yellow-vested staff appear at 8:15 AM. Students who arrive just before 8:15 AM by foot or bike should stand six feet from each other in the bike rack area. 

Secondly, as we enter the cold and flu season, if your child is not feeling well, even if you don’t think it’s COVID and even if he/she is vaccinated, please consider getting a rapid COVID test. COVID tests can be purchased for home use at many local pharmacies. Since we know that people can carry the virus without symptoms, please consider regularly screening your family with home tests. 

In school, we have added social distancing dots back onto our floors. The air purifiers are up and running all day in all classrooms. Our bathrooms are cleaned frequently during the day. High touch surfaces are wiped down several times a day. All of our students are using hand sanitizer coming in and out of the classroom after recesses and many specialist classes. Since we do not have a digital learning option, many of our students that were home all of last year are back in the classroom. As you can imagine, everyone is nervous about the community spread of the virus, especially those families with children that have compromised immune systems or live with family members with compromised immune systems. We appreciate all of the precautions each family is taking at home to keep the whole community safe. 

With next week as our last full week of September, we have a class color day scheduled for Friday, September 24th! Students can wear school appropriate clothing in their class color next Friday. Here are the class colors by grade:
 
Preschool - yellow
Kindergarten - lime green
1st - tye dye
2nd - purple
3rd - pink
4th - turquoise
5th - orange
6th - green
7th - red
8th - blue

Next Tuesday, September 21st, our local Catholic high schools will come visit with our 7th & 8th grade students. Next week, on Wednesday, September 22nd, there will be our first monthly “Visit with the Principal'' for parents event. This month’s event will be virtual, via Zoom, from 9:00-9:30 AM. We hope to move this event to in person when it is safe to do so and shift the time to right after school begins.

We are looking forward to another week full of learning, stretching, and growing!

Peace be with you,
Carol Pausz
Principal