Thank you to those that participated in our Parents Club Meeting event on January 31, 2018 held in the atrium! A special thank you goes out to Patti Fabrizio for helping to promote and coordinate the event.
The forum presented an opportunity for parents of the Saint Patrick community to learn more about current and future doings from the principal’s prospective. In addition, families were given an opportunity to ask questions and further discuss other issues that needed clarification or additional explanation.
As you may be aware, there have been news reports regarding the flu at Saint Patrick. I apologize that the news story has caused you concern. Unfortunately, not all the story was completely factual.
The current strain of flu is causing issues for everyone around the country including schools, businesses, etc. While Saint Patrick was used as an example, the flu has been more prevalent than in the past and is impacting more people including many schools in the Chicagoland area.
Students were absent for a variety of reasons, and while the flu was the most common reason given for their absences, there were students who were not in school for reasons that were not health related. We did and will continue to recommend, as we do in any cases with illness, to both our students and faculty that they should remain home if they do not feel well.
Saint Patrick is cleaned and disinfected each night to minimize any germs being transferred. We continue to monitor the health and well-being of our students and faculty and will notify you of any updates, if needed.
Many of our families have applied for the various SGOs (Scholarship Granting Organizations) since applications opened on January 22. These scholarships will be instrumental in helping current and future Shamrock families. We are eternally grateful to the donors and corporate dollars that are helping to fund this program. For an update on which SGOs are available to apply to, please click on the following link: https://www.stpatrick.org/tax-credit-scholarship/.
We had 267 prospective students take the entrance exam, which included the make-up date. This is up 20% from the previous year’s test numbers. I thanked the parents for all their help and asked for their continued support as we try to solidify the student’s commitment to Saint Patrick High School.
Congrats to our Bowling, Chess, and Robotics Teams!
Our Bowling team competed at the IHSA Bowling State Tournament on January 26 – 27 and our Chess Team recently qualified to compete down state February 9-11. Our Robotics team competed at the First Tech Challenge hosted at St. Pat’s and finished 3rd overall! Robotics teacher, Kori Bowns, provided the structure for Team Captains to lead their teams of student engineers.
This week, Dr. Schmidt and myself began meeting with our seniors during their lunch periods. We meet with 8-12 seniors at a time, once a week. The purpose is to share lunch and allow the students to reflect a bit on their experience here at Saint Patrick High School. Most importantly, it gives us a chance to get to know the students a bit more before they leave us in May!
The school is currently looking for people who would be able to volunteer and substitute at St. Patrick High School. It would especially helpful on our heavier faculty absence days when people are involved in retreats. It is preferred that someone is a certified substitute teacher, but not a mandatory requirement.
Our next Parents Club meeting will be March 21 at 6:30 PM. We invite you to participate in our meeting and discussion.