August 29, 2011

Dear Parents,

Welcome back to another exciting year at SJA! It's hard to believe that the summer went by so quickly.

Last year was such a wonderful year that it inspired the theme for this year: SJA has an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE. We have so much for which to be thankful, especially the SJA Community. We welcome 40+ new students to the school, and 3 new teachers, in addition to our new pastor, Father Michael Rothan, and our newly ordained parochial vicar, Father Brian Wayne. We welcome our new Pre 3 teacher, Miss Nicole Watters, a graduate of Bishop McDevitt, our new Pre 4 teacher, Miss Alexandra DelPrete, who lives down the street on Granada Avenue, and Sister JoAnn, who comes to us from Prince of Peace School in Steelton. We welcome back Mrs. Diane Noto, who will be teaching music to all students, as well as instrument lessons to interested students.

We are very excited about our new playground additions, which were installed on August 20 by a team of about 25 dads and 2 moms, and several high school students, under the direction of a gentleman from the PlayWorld to ensure that all was properly installed. Half of the mulch was just delivered, and the other half will be here on Monday, so the playground will not be used until after Labor Day, when Father Rothan will join with the students and bless it. $20,000 came from the Race for Education, and $10,000 came from a grant from Highmark to Prince of Peace School, which closed at the end of June.

We are happy also with a new P.A. system, with many new features. There are many bell tones for change of class, it has the capability of piping music throughout the school, and schedules may be programmed into it so that we do not have to manually change bells for various occasions.

We have a new middle school soccer team which will play games against the area Catholic schools. We thank Matthew Koepfer for undertaking this challenge. Deb Rizzotto, our Development Director has again scheduled many extracurricular activities for both students and families, to enrich the family spirit of SJA. The teachers have been working hard all summer to learn how to use our 9 interactive white boards that will enhance student learning. We thank Mrs. Remington for guiding and mentoring our teachers in this process. We thank our PTO members, who have been very busy all summer, planning many activities for both students and parents.

We continue with our Olweus Bully Prevention Program, as well as our Health/Wellness Program, both resulting from grants from Highmark. Our piloted Spanish program went so well last year, that we will continue to have 3 Spanish teachers this year for Grades K-5, to supplement the middle school foreign language program.

Once again, thanks to Dr. Hasson and the Maintenance Staff for making our school looking so beautiful! The floors shine like glass! The playground will be so much bigger. Many areas have been painted.

During the summer, the retreat director was talking about having an attitude of gratitude. He said that gratitude is a great remedy for overcoming negativity. If even a small bad thing happens to us, we tend to think about it all day, often forgetting all the many good things. We should not think about negative incidents longer than 2 minutes, or we allow them to rent space in our heads, and it becomes a drama! At the end of 2 minutes, think of 3 things that are positive for which we can be grateful. At the end of the day, think of 3 things for which we can be grateful. It might be a nice idea for you as parents to ask your children what they are grateful for each day as well. Wouldn't it be great if we could all put that into practice! We would then have even more to be grateful for!

Enclosed in this folder are many important forms and information. Please make every effort to return them forms as soon as possible, and to read all of the information.

May the Lord bless each of you in a special way as we all continue to share our gifts for the good of our students. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

With love and prayers,

Sister Eileen