St. Patrick's Blog Week of April 20th, 2015

St. Patrick's Blog

Week of April 20th, 2015

School Site Accommodation Presentation

This past Monday, April 13th, our wider family of schools` parent community met with staff from the School Board to discuss the options around the St. Patrick`s School site accommodation proposal.  The St. Patrick`s Intermediate School Council had collated a number of questions regarding the current proposal and these were addressed by Fred Chrystal, Superintendent of Planning and Facilities, Ken Kary, Manager of Planning, Design and Construction, Cindy MacMillan, Planning Officer and Tom D`Amico, Superintendent of St. Patrick`s family of schools.  The board group outlined the options of in light of the federal government looking at the possible sale of buildings and land adjacent to St. Pat`s Intermediate.  A special thank you to our council chair Cees Arts, and vice-chair Sherisse Al Sabeh for arranging a proactive parent meeting ahead of time and presenting the collated information.  There will be a second accommodation proposal meeting on May 11th, again in the auditorium at St. Patrick High School.  

School Council Meeting and Parent Presentation: Kids and Drugs

We invite all of our parent community to join us on Tuesday, April 21st at 6:00 pm for a school council meeting in our Learning Commons space.  This will be followed at 7:00 pm by an information session on Kids and Drugs.  The presentation will be delivered by the Ottawa Police Service and is sponsored by the Catholic School Parents' Association (CSPA).  The session is for parents, guardians, friends and family members who are concerned about preventing their children from using alcohol & other drugs.  Kids and Drugs is built on known protective factors for substance abuse prevention and strives to improve interactions between kids & parents through improved communication, support, decision making and discipline.  Please click on the link below that will bring you to an information poster highlighting the event.  Click on “register now” to be included.

Kids and Drugs Poster

Grade 8 Year End Celebration excursion to La Ronde

Information forms and parent permission will go home this week for the Grade 8 year end excursion to La Ronde amusement park (website) on June 18th, 2015.  This trip is an end-of-year celebration for the grade 8 students at St. Patrick’s Intermediate and will proceed rain or shine.  Students participating in the field trip will travel by bus to the amusement park.  They will depart from the school at 8:00 am and return at 8:00 pm.  The subsidized cost of the trip (including park entrance and transportation) is $45 - this is a great savings off the regular park admission of $61.99 (not including transportation).  We would ask families to return the permission form and money no later than Tuesday, April 28th, 2015 as we will need to see if we have enough numbers to proceed.  As part of the registration process, we would encourage parents and guardians to forward payment for the trip by using our School Cash Online system.  More information is available below.

School Cash Online

We are actively encouraging our parent and guardian community to sign up for our School Cash online program.  This web-based software allows parents to go online and pay for school excursions, sports wear, student fees etc.  Our St. Patrick’s Intermediate school yearbook will be available for purchase online this week, and student fees for our year end trips for grade 7 and 8 students can also be taken care of online.  Please visit https://ocsb.schoolcashonline.com to register.  If you have any questions about the process or are having technical issues, please call 1-866-961-1803 or email parenthelp@schoolcashonline.com for the Parent Help Desk

Have a great week;

Sean Kelly