President’s Perspective: Busy Week

April 6, 2017

Dear Mater Christi Families,

We’ve had a very busy week at Mater Christi!  On Tuesday morning Bishop Coyne visited Mater Christi School and presided at our all-school liturgy.  Bishop Coyne delivered a wonderful message, and our students were engaged, responsive, and reverent throughout Mass!  We are truly blessed with outstanding students and for this we are most grateful to you, our parents!

Thank you to all of our families who have registered for the upcoming school year. We had a tremendous response to our priority registration efforts and I am pleased to announce that we have received 180 student registrations from our current school families with another ten current students who are in the process of getting fully registered. This is an outstanding number of returning students given the fact that we have 54 students graduating from eighth grade. We are also pleased that we have a fairly sizable number of prospective families who have begun registering as of April 1.  We are so very appreciative of your ongoing commitment and confidence in our school

When we launched our priority registration in early February, we announced that the first 50 families that returned the registration and payment would be entered into a drawing to receive a $250 tuition credit for the 2017-18 academic year. I am pleased to announce that the winners of this drawing are: The Hershey Family and the Robinson Family.  Each of these families will receive a $250 tuition credit on next year’s tuition bill. 

Next week we will begin the observance of holy week as we prepare for the celebration of Easter. We will be having a Stations of the Cross for students on Thursday, April 13 beginning at 8:30 a.m. in our school gym. Our school will closed on Friday, April 14 and Monday, April 17 for the Easter holiday. School resumes on Tuesday, April 18 and we will have four short days of school before our spring break April 24-28, 2017

Following Easter break from May 1-5 we will be conducting standardized testing for all students in grades 3, 5, & 7.  This year our school will be switching to a new standardized test and will only be testing in these grades rather than every grade.  The Terra Nova is used in many private and Catholic schools across this country and as such provides good comparative data with regard to how our students perform in relation to their peers in similar types of schools.  We made the decision to implement the Terra Nova this year because the previous standardized test that was used by our school is no longer available for use. For those families that have children in grades 3, 5, and 7, we ask that you do your best to have your children to school on time during the first week of May. More information about testing will be sent directly to the families in these grades.  Once the testing is complete and we receive the results, we will share these results with individual families as well as sharing overall results with our entire school community so that you have an understanding of how our students perform on this type of standardized test. Stay tuned for more details!

We are just a few short weeks away from our Spring Benefit on Saturday, May 6, 2017, at the Homewood Suites in South Burlington.  I hope that you are planning to attend this very wonderful and important community fundraising event for our school. Donations are currently being accepted and if you were interested in serving as a sponsor for this event and we would welcome your financial support. Please contact Jenn Behr if you are interested in sponsoring or donating. In addition, please register online for this event by following this link: www.materchristischool.eventbrite.com.  We hope to see you there!

Tomorrow evening our PTO will be hosting bingo from 6:00-8:00 pm in our school Gym.  Bingo cards are $5 each and pizza will be sold, so please bring your family and join us for a fun evening.  I hope to see you for bingo tomorrow night!

Have a great weekend ahead!

Patrick A Lofton, Ed.S

President/Head of School