Holy Family Catholic School is now enrolling for the 2012-2013 school year.  We have space available in our Kindergarten so please tell your friends and neighbors.  We offer full and half-day Kindergarten.  We also have space available in grades Pre 3 – 5^th grade and 7^th and 8^th grade.  At this time 6^th grade is at full capacity.  We offer a full curriculum along with music, library and physical education.  Our Resource Room is staffed by a half-time special education teacher, providing service for children with special needs, learning disabilities and learning differences or academic struggles.  All of our students have opportunities to do service.   We invite you to explore Holy Family Catholic School and look forward to meeting you.  Call today for a tour!
 

Please note that when school is delayed on a Wednesday we go by our regular Wednesday start time of 9:15 a.m.  which means if school is delayed two hours, our start time will be 11:15 a.m.  If there is a late start on Wednesday then there will be no extended care in the morning as stated in the Extended Care Handbook.  If there is an emergency early release, extended care will also be canceled for that day. 

Inclement weather is just around the corner.  Please remember that we go by Portland Public Schools decision.  If Portland is closed then Holy Family Catholic School is closed.  On rare occasions,  Portland has decided to remain open and we have called a snow day if the Principal determines it is necessary for the safety of staff and students (or as happened last year, they had a scheduled day off when we were in session).  It is recommended you sign up for PPS and the Private School section in Flash Alert and Twitter if you have it, just to make sure that you get all of the information in case of school closure or when emergency situations such as power outages or early dismissal arise. Please note: Sometimes only certain schools are closed due to snow in the upper elevations.  Be sure to read the whole ticker at the bottom of the tv screen.  Sometimes just the west side schools are closed.  When all schools in Portland are closed or just the east side, then we are closed. 

The lost and found has moved to the landing below the 5th grade.  Please check it often. 
The Contracts for next year are due Friday May 18.  There are some revisions this year made by Fr. George.  Remember if you are members of Holy Family Parish you will need a completed form from the Parish which states you are in "good standing"    in order to receive the Catholic rate.  If you attend a Parish which has no school, such as Our Lady of Sorrows, a Parish subsidy form signed by your pastor will need to be submitted with your contract in order to receive the Catholic rate.  Please contact Val in the parish office or Sharon in the school office, if you have questions regarding these forms. 



  sharon.reece@holyfamilyportland

As always, we are happy to help if you need information or have a concern.  Call us at 503-774-8871 Ext 101


Sharon

 

The Good News This Week

The best solutions often work quietly compared to the noisy problems they address. The unique classroom-challenges facing under-performing or learning-disabled students, for instance, are something we may all be vaguely familiar with from their discussion in the media, but, chances are, unless personal experience has already made those challenges a part of your daily life, the resources available to students and educators dealing with these challenges most likely remain foggy at best.  How do we evaluate whether a student has an LD?  How can we work to meet the unique needs of these students while still serving the whole classroom? Here at Holy Family, the answers to these questions are changing, and for the better. Using a newly improved technique called Response to Intervention (RtI), Holy Family educators can now evaluate a student with a LD faster than ever before and more quickly deliver resources helping that student perform at her natural level of achievement.  RtI works by looking for discrepancies between a student’s academic performance and broader measures of achievement, the idea being that a LD may first manifest as the difference between these two metrics.   “It used to be that the process of identifying a student with special education needs took years,” explains Holy Family Principal, Christy Robinson, referring to the time it took to accumulate sufficient data to make such a comparison, “but, with these new methods, we can evaluate and serve these students in a fraction of that time which means less time spent suffering in silence.”   Using a series of less time-consuming evaluations administered with greater frequency throughout the year, Holy Family teachers are now able to identify under-performing students and more quickly involve them in learning groups designed to address their specific learning challenges.  Administrators, teachers, and Holy Family’s special education teacher, Liz Richard, meet twice monthly to analyze recent student data, evaluate the needs of under-performing students, and design specialized curriculum for them.  These specializations may vary - from reading buddies to one-on-one math tutoring sessions - but their goal remains identifying a chronically under-served student population and welcoming those kids back into the classroom.

“This has not been a perfect process,” admits Robinson of her efforts to implement RtI at Holy Family, “but we’ve made real progress this year.  Liz [Richard] and the teachers are the real heroes and their interest and work ethic has been inspiring.”

Inspiring teachers at Holy Family is nothing new, of course.  RtI just works to increase the number of students they can inspire.

-Derrick Martin-Campbell

$500 REWARD

For the 2012-2013 school year HFCS has some empty chairs pining away for new students to fill them. So recommend us to your friends and neighbors. If one of them registers, you’ll get $500 off your tuition for the 2012-2013 school year!

Save a stamp and make your donation to the 2011-12 Holy Family Annual Fund today at our safe and secure IATS donation page.