News for the Week of 6-6-13

Kindergarten got a visit from our newly assigned Parochial Vicar & School Chaplain, Father Santiago.
Welcome, Father Santiago!  We are so happy to have you as part of our community!

Calendar Review - It's one of the busiest times of the year!  Please take a moment to review upcoming events.

 St. Mary's Spring Carnival is underway.  See below for more information about this family friendly spring tradition.

Friday, June 7 - Celebrating the Class of 2013.  Join us for Mass at 10am in the Church.  Please remember that no physical education uniforms should be worn to Mass.  There will be a Class Day Assembly celebrating our graduates at 1pm in the Parish Center.  The Graduation ceremony will take place in the Church at 7pm.

June 13, 14, 17 and 18 are all full days of school.  Prekindergarten enrichment and aftercare are available.

Wednesday, June 19 is our last day of school.   This is a 12:45pm early dismissal day.  There is no Prekindergarten enrichment or aftercare available.  Community prayer will be extended in the Parish Center and there will be no prayer service in the Church - This is a change from the original school calendar.  The Academic Awards Assembly will take place at 9:30am (this is also a change, original start time was 9:45am) in the Parish Center.  Parents will be notified if students are receiving an award.

Summer office hours begin Thursday, 6/20/13.  In general, the school office will be staffed daily from 9am-1pm.  Voice mail and email will be checked regularly.  A "Back to School" mailing will be sent out to all enrolled families during the month of August.

A Sweet Treat!  In response to the wonderful get well cards our students prepared for him after his recent surgery, Father Michael Whyte, Pastor of St. Catherine of Siena in West Simsbury, provided every student at school with one of the season's best treats:  a visit from the ice cream truck!  Every student (and every adult that wanted to join in on the fun) was allowed to select the ice cream treat of his/her choice.


Our thanks to Father Michael for his generous and fabulous treat and to Rebecca Jaoui, owner of "Ice Cream on Wheels".  If your summer event needs an ice cream truck, you can reach Rebecca at rebjaoui@yahoo.com.

A Word about iPads - All iPads will be stored at school over the summer.  Gr. 8 students have turned in their iPads.  We are still waiting for a few of their chargers to be returned.  All other iPads and chargers must be turned in at the end of the day on Monday, June 17.

Prior to turning in iPads for summer storage, all students should be sure to back up any content that is stored on the iPad.  One good example is any notes that are saved in Notability.  These notes should be backed up to a "cloud" storage solution like Evernote or Dropbox or even emailed to the student.  Over the summer, all iPads will be "refreshed" to apply App updates and new apps.  Any iOS software updates that may become available will also be applied. Most of the time, no loss of content will occur during this process but it is a real risk and backup of important information is advised. When school begins, your student will be given back the same iPad they used this year.

Student Directory Update - Please update your student directories with a new address for the Gomez-Nieto family.  The new address is:  2 Litchfield Drive, Simsbury, 06070.  There is no change to phone number or family email.

Reminder to SMART Tuition Account Holders - As you begin making payments in June on your 2013-2014 SMART account, please remember to change the school year in your account number from 12 to 13.  Account numbers are broken down as follows:  02300 is the school code; 13 refers to the school year; and the last six digits reflect your individual family's account.  If you continue making payments using the 12 school year, they will apply to your 2012-13 account, generating an overpayment status.  Your 2013-14 account will then appear delinquent, causing $45 late fees to accrue each month the payments are missing.  If you have any questions about this, please call SMART Tuition's Parent Customer Care at 1-888-868-8828.

Connecticut Legislative Alert - Mission Accomplished!  Transportation saved!  Thanks to the action taken by so many of you, Connecticut's legislative leaders have restored the funds needed to provide safe bus transportation to Catholic school students. Please take a moment to read an update from Dr. Dale Hoyt, Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Archdiocese of Hartford:

Dear Catholic School Administrators, Parents/Guardians, Teachers, Students, and Friends of Catholic schools:

Thank you for your extremely hard work during the past few weeks, the General Assembly and Governor Malloy decided to fully restore the funding for buses (they also restored virtually all of the funding for public school  buses -- $24M).

Below is the text of line T625 of the Budget Bill, HB 6704, that shows $3.5M has been restored.  The House of Representatives enacted the budget at 12:20am on Sunday, and the Senate will enact the Budget on Monday morning.  I think that it is now safe for you to pull the alerts from your school websites.  There is no need to make any more phone calls to the State Capitol at this time.  

T625

Non-Public School Transportation

3,595,500

3,595,500

This is great news at the start of a new week.

Peace and blessings-

Dale R. Hoyt, Ed.D. Superintendent of Catholic Schools

Office of Catholic Schools

Archdiocese of Hartford

860-242-4362

www.catholicschoolshartford.org

Yearbooks have been distributed to grade 8 students. The rest of our student body will receive their yearbooks next week.  If you did not preorder a yearbook, there are a few extra available for purchase in the School Office.  Please call or email smsoffice@stmarysimsbury.eduk12.net for more information.

Home & School Association

Spring Book Fair:  Thank you to everyone who helped make the Spring Book Fair a great success, especially Jennifer Pavlonnis, Laura Williams, Karen McKenna, Amber Hall, Bridget Shanley and everyone who spent time helping our students pick out some great summer reading material.  Our volunteers worked early in the morning, throughout the day and over the weekend to make the Book Fair happen.  Parishioners were happy to be able to purchase some summer reading as well at the Coffee and Doughnut hour after the Sunday Masses.

Community News -

St. Mary's Spring Carnival is underway and continues through June 8th. For more information, click here.  To  St. Mary's School receives 50% of funds raised by the carnival, so let's show our support by volunteering! Your help, even for an hour or two, would really be appreciated and it's a lot of fun!  The Spring Carnival is one of the most family friendly traditions in the Farmington Valley!  Click here or contact Peg Mancarella at Margaret.Mancarella@gmail.com.

Would you like a chance to win $10,000?  Raffle tickets are now available at $20 each.  The annual St. Mary's Spring Carnival is underway from June 5-8, and the raffle will be held Saturday, June 8th at 8 pm.  Winner need not be present.  If you are interested in purchasing tickets, simply kidmail a check payable to "St. Mary's Spring Raffle", and include the name, address and phone number.





Altar Server Recognition - During the past year, the altar servers of our parish have contributed to the beauty and devotion of our worship by the reverent and careful way in which they have served at the Altar. During the 11:00 AM Mass on June 9th, their service will be recognized.  Novice servers will be promoted to the rank of “acolyte.” Many of the present acolytes will be promoted to the rank of “crucifer.” And some of the “crucifers” will be promoted to the rank of “master server.” Please join us in thanking our altar servers on Sunday, June 9th.

Avon Soccer Club Announces Fall Clinics - Click here for information about Fall recreational clinics open to Avon residents.

 

Prekindergarten went on a field trip to the Simsbury Fire Department.