Principal's Newsletter: Hats Off to St. Marys, Spring Break Attendance, Annual Fund Update, Tax Credit Scholarship, School Calendar and more.

Dear School of St. Mary Parents,

This week our School of St. Mary Fourth graders visited the Milwaukee Public Museum. While there, our students viewed the Native American exhibit, rocks and minerals display, and the Regions of the Earth exhibits, all of which correspond with lessons they are learning in class. Our students were also able to experience a live butterfly garden, a recreation of the streets of old time Milwaukee, and were able to view the Wisconsin Stargazers. Wisconsin Stargazers is a live tour of the current Wisconsin night sky presented in a 22-minute guided Planetarium program. Students were able to witness all of the current night constellations on a clear Dome Theater "sky," such as planets, galaxies, meteors, and other fun celestial phenomena, which helped to make the trip memorable for all in attendance. Thank you to our fourth-grade teachers, Jennie Bodine and Kristina Madsen for planning and arranging this trip, along with our parent chaperones for helping to make the day so special for all of our students. Thanks for letting me tag along as well!

day our School of St. Mary Seventh and Eighth-grade students traveled to St. Patrick's Church to experience the special exhibit, The Vatican International Exhibit of the Eucharistic Miracles of the World. This field trip served as an extension of our students' religion classes, and had on display well documented and Church verified miracles. The Vatican Eucharistic Miracles Photographic Exhibition faithfully recounts for us 156 well documented Church approved miraculous occurrences by the country in which they occurred. The trip served as a reminder that God is apparent in our everyday lives as well as providing a good way to prepare for the Lenten season. Thanks to Thomas Head for arranging this.

Some of you may have heard of the latest YouTube fad in our students' lives. This week, several of our students informed their teacher about a video they saw called the Momo Challenge. Some of our students were upset by the message of the video and reported their fears to the teacher, which generated a very good teachable moment. Not being familiar at all with this, I investigated the Momo Challenge. In the video, a scary face appears suddenly, aimed at scaring the viewer. The face encourages the viewer to complete various challenges. The video requests the viewer send a photo as proof of the completed challenge. The challenges begin small but may lead to self-harm and even worse. Tech experts say the challenge is a viral hoax, and that Momo is an urban legend meant to scare students and parents. Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges are against our policies. The School of St. Mary is planning on having presentations on Internet safety and precautions as a result of this. If your child finds the Momo Challenge YouTube video, please speak with him/her about the dangers of listening to or engaging in the challenges. Please monitor what your child is doing on the computer/cell phones at all times. As always, I appreciate your partnership in keeping our School of St. Mary students safe.

Dave Wieters

Principal

UGC Spring Break Attendance Notification

Spring Break begins on Monday, March 25th thru Friday, March 29th, returning to school on Monday,

April 1st. If anyone is planning on taking additional days off, please send Mrs. Liden an email with the following information.

Student Name

Homeroom Teacher

Days and dates of absences

Return to school date

Reason for absence

Buy your tickets now for the Hats Off to St. Marys Spring Event

Archdiocese of Chicago Tax Credit Scholarship

Save the date for the next Parent's Association Meeting

Dear School of St. Mary Families,

We hope the current school year has been full of learning and fun experiences for both you and your families. It is hard to believe the year is over halfway done and we are almost to Spring Break already!

We at the Parents' Association wanted to provide you with an update on the 2018-2019 Annual Fund Fundraising campaign. While the year started off well with high corporate sponsorship contributions and our strongest Giving Tuesday campaign ever, we are still unfortunately very far from our necessary fundraising goal of $330,000, with $107,000 raised year-to-date.

As many of you know, the Annual Fund goes to directly support the operations of the school, financial aid for our students and bonuses to support the amazing teachers that work so hard to shape our children day in and day out.

We are writing to ask for your help.

Every dollar counts and we are hoping to garner participation from 100% of our school families. Every donation that goes towards the Annual Fund directly impacts our students and teachers. There are opportunities coming up to help us reach that goal, but we will need the help of ALL of our School of St. Mary community and friends.

The Hats off to St. Marys party is on Saturday, March 9 and proceeds from the silent auction will go directly to supporting the Annual Fund. The silent auction items are now posted and can be viewed here. Additionally, we have our great GiveCentral platform that allows for online giving and provides a real-time status of the Annual Fund.

We know that in the School of St. Mary community anything is possible if we work together. There will also be more fun events in the future so please keep your eyes peeled for announcements for the rest of this school year. Finally, we invite you to join us at our next Parents' Association Meeting Wednesday, May 8th where we will outline the events for next school year and begin planning all the fun fundraising events for the future. If you have any questions about donating to the Annual Fund please reach out to Marketing and Development Director, Julia Donohoe at [email protected].

We look forward to reaching this goal together and thank you for your continued support of our great school!

Sincerely,

Julia Donohoe, Development Director

School of St. Mary Parents' Association

Amazon Smile

AmazonSmile is a website operated by Amazon with the same products, prices, and shopping features as Amazon .com. The difference is that when you shop on AmazonSmile , the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the School of St. Mary.

To use amazon smile go to smile.amazon.com and then select School of St. Mary Lake Forest, IL as your organization of choice. Then just use amazon as you normally would you will be supporting the school without even thinking about it.

School of St. Mary Football

Lake Forest High School: Parents Unofficial Guide to Freshman Year

Thursday, April 11

6:30 - 8:00pm

Raymond Moore Auditorium

Lake Forest High School East Campus

1285 N McKinley Rd.

Hosted by the Association for Parents and Teachers and Educational Services

Hot Lunch Orders

Please make sure you are placing your orders for hot lunch by clicking here . We are happy to again be working with Kiddos Catering to bring our students hot lunches. For more information on our hot lunch program please read this story from the AP about how they are changing school lunches. If you need assistance with the Kiddos Catering program, please contact them at [email protected].

Church of St. Mary Sacrament Schedule

Woodlands Parent Preview

Tuesday, March 19th at 9:00am

Parents get a first look at what a Woodlands Academy education could look like for your daughter. Enjoy a round table converstaion with our Principal, Head of School, current parents, and other key members of the administration followed by a personalized tour of campus. To register click here.

Loyola 3 v. 3 tournament and Basketball Clinic