**WEEKLY UPDATE**
HOLY SPIRIT SCHOOL
Edition #24 February 20, 2008
“It’s For the Children”
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Thursday, February 21 |
FAME |
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Friday, February 22 |
Stations of the Cross 2:15 pm Uniform Exchange 3:00 pm in front of Gym Filipino Class 3:10 pm |
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Saturday, February 23 |
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Sunday, February 24 |
Lenten Reflection Series: Family 8TH Grade Leaves for Yosemite Lillian Black Art Festival – Bishop O’Dowd H.S. |
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Monday, February 25 |
Regular School Day |
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Tuesday, February 26 |
Spanish Class 3:10 pm |
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Wednesday, February 27 |
2:20 pm Dismissal |
CASH CALENDAR: Our $100.00 Cash Calendar winners for this week are Mr. & Mrs. Michael Jay, parents of Kevin Jay in Grade 8. Congratulations! Remember, every ticket purchased is eligible for each drawing, even if it has won before. So purchase your Cash Calendar tickets ($10.00 per ticket) and help Holy Spirit School. More tickets are available in the school office. GOOD LUCK!
CASH FOR CLASS: Holy Spirit School is currently in 1st place!! Parents, please fill up your brown sacks with Fremont Hub receipts! At the end of the month, send the receipts to the school office and keep the bag to fill again. There is no need to fill out any envelopes; I will do that for you. Shop at the Hub and send in your receipts within 45 days, anything older that that will not count. Thanks, Lenora Garcia
FIRST COMMUNION MEETING: The 2nd Grade First Communion Parent meeting scheduled for Monday, February 25th has been postponed due to our Parish Mission beginning that evening. The meeting will now take place on Monday, March 10th in the Church. Please make this change on your calendars. Thank you.
FACE & BASIC APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE: In today’s family envelope you will find an information sheet regarding the BASIC Fund application. If you have a new student starting Catholic school for the first time, and you meet the requirements, please come to the school office for an application. Renewing families will receive a packet the first week of April. Renewing families adding a new child in the fall must fill out an application for the new child. We also have applications for FACE in the school office as well. FACE applications need to be returned to the school office no later than March 28, 2008. Please call the school office if you have any questions.
SPELL-A-THON MONEY DUE: All Spell-a-thon money is due on Friday, February 22nd. Be sure to collect pledged money from all sponsors and turn it in to the office by the due date. Thank you.
MERRY MART SALE: Merry Mart Uniform Store is having an on-line sale during the month of February. They are offering families 10% off when you shop on their website, www.merrymartuniforms.com Remember, they will also donate 3% of your purchases to our school. If you are needing to buy new uniform items, February looks like a great opportunity to save money and help out Holy Spirit School at the same time.
UNIFORM EXCHANGE: Uniform Exchange will be held this Friday, February 22 beginning at 2:30PM in front of the gym.
BOXTOPS FOR EDUCATION: The dead line for Box Tops for Education is Friday, February 22! Please turn in all your box tops to the office by this date. We are hoping to break our yearly goal and are well on our way. Please bundle them in groups of 50 and trim them to save postage. Thank you.
YEARBOOKS: There is still time to order your Holy Spirit School Yearbook. The price is now $20.00. Share in all the fun and memories of this school year.
SEE’S CANDY: The 7th Graders at Holy Spirit School are selling See’s Candies as a fundraiser for their Yosemite trip and graduation fees. Easter is just around the corner, so look for them or call the office. There is no sales tax and you don’t have to make a trip to the busy mall. Thanks for your support.
FUN WALK/RUN NEEDS SPONSORS: We're looking for sponsors for the 2008 Catch the Spirit Family Fun Walk/Run! This year promises to surpass last year's participant number of over 300 and we're looking for event sponsors to make this a super experience for all walkers and runners, young and old. This growing community event is a great opportunity to promote your business and support the HSS and Tri-city community. We have four sponsorship levels: $150 Spirit Sponsor, $300 Bronze Medal Sponsor, $500 Silver medal Sponsor and $1,000 Gold Medal Sponsor. All sponsorship levels allow for printing of your business, employer or family name on race shirts and literature, and will be publicized by the MC on race day. For more information, contact Lucia Pena @ 791-2655 and Rosey Loaisiga @ 790-8354.
A special thanks to our early sponsors! Fairway Park Optometry Center-Dr. Ximena Daza- Cannizzaro, Law Offices of Gustavo Pena, Landscape By Design, Coulthard Identity Group, M.L. Nielsen Construction, Dale's Hardware, Happy Fish Swim School, Apple's Bagel, Starbuck's-City Center, The Grocery Outlet and Butchart Medical Offices.
CRAB FEED UPDATE: The Crab Feed and Auction is just three weeks away, and we're almost sold out! As of this morning, we have 21 tickets left to this year's Crab Feed and Auction, so the time to get your tickets (if you haven't already) for the social event of the year in both the school and the parish is NOW! Tickets are just $40! Call Barney Chan right away at 797-6188 or barney168@sbcglobal.net to get your tickets to the Crab Feed and Auction on March 8th!
The Auction team is putting the final touches on this year's auction, and you don't want to miss your chance to win some of the fabulous items we have this year, including the various overnight hotel stays at Marriott's in the Bay Area, the Lone Oak Lodge in Monterey, and also a week in Orlando near Disney World! Want one of the reserved parking spaces? The only place to buy it is at the Crab Feed and Auction. The front row for the Christmas Program, the front row for the Kindergarten prayer service, and graduation are also up for bid on March 8th! Sports fans: Retired Raider John Vella will be in the house with us, and he's bringing sports memorabilia for you to bid on as well.
This year's theme is "On Broadway," and we've got the Brite Spots coming, who will be performing Broadway songs just for you, and are also donating a personalized CD (you pick the songs from a list, they'll record them for you and add personalization to make the CD truly yours). The only place to get these fabulous items is at the Crab Feed and Auction, on Saturday, March 8th, right here in the parish center!
FAHER/SON EVENT: In today’s family envelope you will find an invitation to this year’s Father/Son event on March 29, 2008.
WHAT’S NEW WITH THE SCHOOL BOARD TECH COMMITTEE: In the last few months, the Technology Committee has completed an effort began last spring to get laptops into the hands of our teachers. In conjunction with the new server system, the laptops allow our teachers to work in a much more flexible and adaptive manner that suits their schedules and needs.
Teachers are not the only ones with laptops. We are now well underway towards the goal of having a "mobile computer lab." The mobile lab would consist of a bank of laptops (eventually 36) stored on a portable cart that could be moved from classroom to classroom. In the fall we added 7 laptops to the existing Computer Lab at school for the eventual mobile lab. The recent grant funding awarded to the school has allowed us to accelerate our plans. We already placed an order for 10 more laptops from those monies.
We started 2008 with a newly designed school website. Crafted from the ground up, the new website is hosted on the new servers and what you are reading is, hopefully, but a sample as we continue to take advantage of the rich features.
The staff is required to do an in-depth plan in technology for the Oakland Diocese. The good news is that, relative to the expectations of technology in our curriculum, our technology planning over the last year has created a ready-to-use archive of materials related to current and future planning, deploying, staffing, and utilizing technology.
What’s coming for the Tech Committee? Right now we’re working on assessing options and making recommendations for interactive whiteboards for classrooms.
If you have any questions or wish to contribute in some way to our Tech Committee please contact the committee chair, Tim Riener at triener@pacbell.net or leave a message at the school office.
SCHOOL BOARD NEWS: Father Mathew has appointed Gloria del Rosario and Barry Slivinsky to the School Board. Congratulations.
SUMMER SCHOOL: It’s not too early to start planning activities for the summer. St. Edward School has been running a 5-week summer school program that offers three separate sessions to allow for vacation time, or to just give parents a break for 1, 2 or up to 5 weeks during the summer. Classes available include both enrichment and remedial, including cooking, music, art, science, math, reading, grammar, vacation bible study, double dutch jump rope, engineering, and much more. Classes are open to incoming 1st through 8th graders. The dates of summer school run from June 23 through July 25, 2008. The summer school brochures will be available in the school office before Easter break. If you have any further questions, please contact St. Edward School at 793-7242.
MOREAU HONOR ROLL: The following 2007 graduates of Holy Spirit School are currently on the Honor Roll at Moreau Catholic High School: Erin Safreno, Monica Santiago, & Kevin Stammerjohn all with GPA’s 3.5 and above; and Marissa Aquino, JP Garcia, Mariah Garcia, Sean Gerardo, Robert Palmer and Megan Scully all with GPA’s 3.0 – 3.49. Congratulations on you hard work.
NOTES FROM THE PRINCIPAL:
Dear Parents and Students,
First of all, it has been great to see so many winners for our Cash Calendar drawings. We still have one more $1,000.00 winner and many $100.00 winners before the end of school on June 12th.
If you still have your $300.00 mandatory tickets to sell or you are selling for option 2 toward tuition, we need your money and tickets in by March 5th. For those of you on the option 2 plan, we want to show your adjusted tuition amounts on your April tuition bill. Please remember that this was only what you sold over the mandatory $300.
For any family that did not sell the $300.00 mandatory Cash Calendar tickets, we need to add this $300.00, to your last tuition bill for April, which will be sent home on March 19th.
Again, we need all Cash Calendar Money by March 5th in order to give credit to your account for tuition on option 2.
Finally, I regret to inform you that Mr. John Hall will not be returning to HSS for the 2008-09 school year. He has served HSS, the students and staff, for the last 6 years and has been a member of the technology committee and worked to enhance our technology during these last two years. We wish him the best in all his future endeavors.
“You have to be holy where you are –wherever God has put you.”
~Mother Teresa~
God’s blessings today and always,
Susan C. Buchanan