Just Checking In

St. Christopher School * 13305 Proctor Road, Philadelphia, PA 19116 * 215-673-5787

JUST CHECKING IN

JUNE 4, 2008

God bless all of the grads and dads in our SCS family!

THIS IS IT! BUT, PLEASE RETURN THE ENVELOPE AND… your family name will be entered in a drawing for a Rita gift card to enjoy this summer. In the interests of recycling and good stewardship, these communication envelopes can be re-used for your family next year. We’ll simply put updated labels on them and they’ll be ready to go. Be sure to send the envelope back tomorrow and we’ll hold the drawing at the end of the day.

WE HAVE BEEN FORTUNATE WITH THE WEATHER Tomorrow is the students’ last full day as they finish end-of-year testing and we can say that the weather has been kind to schools this year. Even if next Thursday is a hot one when the students return for their last day of the 2007-2008 school year, they’ll be able to handle it. With our closing liturgy and our many school awards, it is an exciting time. Having said that, this is a good place to remind you again that the award for perfect attendance is reserved for those students who have never missed a day or have never been late or left early no matter what the reason. The only exception is absence for a family funeral. We can’t make exceptions for this.

WHEN THE REPORT CARD ENVELOPES COME HOME NEXT THURSDAY in addition to report cards, there will be other information enclosed so be sure to go through it all and keep it for future reference. One of the areas that has been difficult this year is uniform. We want our children to know that when they are here they are in a different setting than a playground and look like they are. As parents, we ask that you be sure that your children look the role of proud students with full uniform including belts, school sneakers, etc. We thank all those parents who make sure that their children come to school as they should. It makes a difference and has solid logic behind it.

ANOTHER $10,000 FOR SCS! Thanks to Aegis, the Bridge Foundation is able to offer SCS families another $10,000 in grant monies for the 2008-2009 school year. If you sent your name in for the last lottery and your name was not drawn, we will enter your name in this new drawing. If you didn’t send in your name for the lottery last time, please be sure to call the Parish Center at 215-673-5177 and leave your name. You must call by Wednesday, June 11th as the lottery drawing will take place on Thursday, June 12th. These grants are an excellent way to help with your SCS tuition so we hope you’d like to be considered. Worst case scenario is that your family income makes you ineligible but there are many components to that bottom line and you’ll never know if you don’t enter your name. All your information is treated in a confidential manner.

MIDDLE SCHOOL COMPUTER PROFICIENCY If you’ve been at our H&S meetings, you’ve heard Mrs. Tremper talk about a national computer proficiency standard and national testing to see the level of our 8th Grade’s proficiency. The students took a pre-test in October and a post-test this May. All of these tests are administered and submitted online to the national testing group. The students were tested in the following areas: systems and fundamentals, social and ethical, word processing, spreadsheets, multimedia and presentations, telecommunications and internet, and database. Group 1 went from being 93% to being 100% proficient as a group, Group 2 from 77% to 93%, and Group 3 from 73% to 93%. Our school scored above the Middle School Proficiency Standard, above the All Middle School Average, and above the District Average (Archdiocese of Philadelphia). In short, we scored higher in all areas. We are proud of this as it speaks not only of the proficiency of our students tested but also of the technology program that is in place at SCS. We thought that you’d enjoy reading good news like this!

PEOPLE AND EVENTS Here are the SCS results of the Arcdiocesan Track Championships this past Saturday. 4x8 Boys 1st place (Gold) are : Tommy McMonagle, Charles Hoyt, Chris Muldoon, and Kyle Murphy.

4x8 Girls 5th place are : Erin Young, Shannon Harrington, Stephanie Welte, and Meaghan Harrington. 800m -2nd place (Silver) - Charles Hoyt. We congratulate these medalists and our entire team for a fine season. As promised, you can see the entire team listed on the back.

CRITICAL THINKING 101 Congratulations to Lisa Gogel (5-16) whose correct entry was drawn. Like so very many of our students, Lisa figured out that we will have 82 days to enjoy all the good things of summer, one of which is having even more time to get lost in a good book!