Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of Saint Benedict:

This past week we celebrated Catholic School’s Week. We are fortunate here to have a viable school where we are able to expand our programs at a time when many Catholic schools are shutting their doors. We have a strong faculty committed to the principles of Catholic education, to offering the best learning opportunities and environment for their students, and to the success of St. Benedict’s School.

As you know we are expanding this Fall to include a preK-4 class. Given the early response it appears that we will need to offer two sections. While this adds pressure to the existing facilities, it is a great problem to have. We will need to add mobile classrooms to the campus in order to accommodate all of our classes. By removing the already existing mobile classroom, which is underutilized and no longer viable, we will able to place a brand new double classroom unit on the site. This will house Music and Spanish. This way no student has to go out to the mobile classroom every day. The plans for the new dedicated science lab are well underway. We committed the revenue from the Carnival in September to this project. Along with the proceeds from the 50/50 Raffle we will be able to make this happen with little or no additional revenue.

The current science lab will remain as a science classroom with a demonstration desk. The new lab will be for lab period use only. This gives more students regular access to the lab, increasing our hands-on science learning projects. This along with the new maker space robotics program housed in the library/learning center provides students with an interactive educational experience. STEM is the new buzzword in edu-speak and we are committed to its implementation here. In Catholic School circles we use the acronym STREAM instead, to show our commitment to Religion and Art as well as Science, Technology, and Mathematics. For much of the past thirty years Computer Labs were necessary in the school setting. St. Benedict’s, along with every other school in the country, worked to develop the best and most up-to-date lab. With the rapid changing pace of hardware and software labs became obsolete quickly and upgrades were constantly needed. Today, with the use of individual student devices: I-pads for the younger students and Google Chromebooks for the upper grades, a dedicated computer lab is redundant. Therefore we will be able to remove the computer lab and reclaim that space for classroom use. Technology is infused in every aspect of the curriculum, as students have continual access to wireless technology. The technology director will work with individual teachers on the integration and students will have exposure to coding and other necessary computer specific learning in their own classrooms. This offers a more integrated approach to learning and technology which is more in line with where education is moving. We are moving the eighth graders from the Google Chromebooks to Surface computers. This will further enhance their interactive learning opportunities and prepare them for the high schools where this technology is already in place.

We will also need to shift office space around as the room where Religious Education/Social Worker/Bookkeeper are presently housed is needed for classroom use. We should be making these moves in April so that work can begin, enabling everything to be in place for the Fall. We might be calling upon some skilled and enthusiastic parishioners and school parents to provide some “sweat equity” to help move this project along. With the development of the Middle School model, the sixth grade will move to the first wing and work on the same rotation schedule as the seventh and eighth grades. This will assist the students in adapting to high school and align us more with the public school model of education.

I am most grateful to our principal, Ms. Wallace for her vision and implementation skills. The faculty has been very supportive and positive in these endeavors. It is up to us to continue to support the school in every way that we can.
Father Garry