St. Lawrence O’Toole School

Dear Parents,

Welcome back! I hope that your Christmas was filled with love and family. The teachers, staff, and I want to thank all of you for your generosity to us at Christmas. Besides the gifts, you delighted us daily with cookies, candies, doughnuts, bagels, cakes, fruit, and oodles of treats! And as difficult as it was, we managed to consume them all!!

The last few days before Christmas were filled with parties and goodies, movies, theater trips to Radio City, the Grinch, West Conn , and crafts. The children in grades Pre-K to grade 5 enjoyed the talents of storyteller Jonathan Kruk who entertained them with stories of Christmases past and from around the world.

January is filled with testing. In the next two weeks, our Fourth and Eighth graders will take the New York State exams in Language Arts. Next week and the following week are Midterm exams for students in grades 1-8 as mandated by the Archdiocesan Department of Education. All tests will review materials from the beginning of the year, but they will be age-appropriate. Teachers will give students a schedule of tests and an overview of materials to be studied. So, check the book bags and assignment pads!

These tests are a great opportunity for students to see how much work they have accomplished so far this year and to gain an appreciation of connecting all the data covered and skills acquired. It is an opportunity for the child to “synthesize” what has been learned.

Coming up in the last weeks of January, is our annual Family Fun Night, Open House and Registration, and our Catholic Schools Week celebration. I hope that you will join us for all these events.

Our Marketing Committee has met and developed a few new initiatives to help build our enrollment. We have taken an ad in the local Welcome Wagon journal, which entitles us for a full year of advertising and reminder post cards to every new family moving into the in the Brewster area. With the local Catholic schools of Northern Westchester/Putnam area, including Kennedy Catholic, we have joined with the diocese to do a mailing to over 7,000 families inviting them to come and join our Catholic school communities.

Our Open House is scheduled for Sunday, January 27 launching Catholic Schools Week. We need your help to make this a success. Please invite your friends and neighbors to come and check us out. If you are available on Sunday, January 27, please volunteer for any time slot between 10AM to 2PM, to be a parent ambassador with your child, to greet our visitors. If you are able to deliver flyers (color, b/w) to local pediatricians’ offices, the Library, Post Office, shops and bulletin boards, and real estate offices, please send me a note or e-mail. Coach is contacting all the newspapers and radio stations. We need to share the success of St. Lawrence students with our community!

We will also be mailing our re-registration forms to our current families. Please fill them out and return them to the main office.

We have been invited to attend an evening for parents, sponsored by St. Patrick’s School in Bedford, with Dr. Bob Lento, a distinguished educator, who has spoken at the national conference for Catholic educators and to many public school parent audiences for the past few years. I have heard Dr. Lento speak and he shares his wealth of knowledge in an entertaining manner, with great humor, and stories based on real life experiences. The workshop is free to parents and is worth the time spent. I am looking forward to hearing him again. I hope you will be able to attend, too. The details are on the attached flyer. In fact, Dr. Lento will be the guest speaker at the combined Teachers’ Conference workshop on Friday, January 18th.

Our Student Council is hosting a Dance on Friday, January 11 for students in the neighboring Catholic schools as a follow up to the Bicentennial celebration Mass and reception at Seton School. The dance is open to students in grades 6-8 and will be held in our gym. The dress code is no jeans. The Student Council is hoping this will be the first of many events sponsored in conjunction with neighboring schools.

I have some great news to share. Our ten new IBM computers have arrived and they should be up and operational by the end of the month in our computer lab. Our teachers have completed their second training course on the use of the SMART Board. We will be trying it out in class in the next few weeks.

I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.

Mrs. O’Leary