Happy Monday everyone! We had a great week with the Father/Daughter Dance ending the school week on Friday.  We thank Mrs. Cecchini and the numerous other volunteers who made this event so memorable for our girls and their fathers.  Photos of the event speak of love and fun.  We are so pleased to now offer a bowling night for mothers and sons as well as the father and daughter event.

Further, we had five seventh and eighth grade students participate in the Perennial Math Championship at the Weiss School this past Sunday. This competition is new to us, but it is one where leading private and public schools participate.  Some of the schools that participated were the Weiss School, BAK, St. Mark, and St. Juliana, just to name a few.  I am so pleased to announce Madison Fiske placed second and Tyler Taplett placed third in the eighth grade individual competition.  Alexandra Barkauskas placed second in the seventh grade individual competition. Overall, our school placed second in the middle school level team competition. Thank you to Ingrid Corpus and Anthony Hargreave who contributed to this team win. We did not have any lower grade levels participate.  This is a true testament to our academic rigor and strength of our Math Department.  Great job students and teachers.  We thank Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Heater, and Mrs. Townsend for organizing our students for this event.

On the sports front we are now entering finals in girls' soccer tomorrow, JV boys' basketball finals this week, and Varsity boys' basketball next week. Proudly, we wish to congratulate our Varsity boys' basketball team who lost by one point in the finals of the Diocesan Basketball Tournament held on Sunday at Cardinal Newman High School. This tournament brought some of the top schools of the entire Diocese together.

Wednesday begins Lent with the distribution of ashes during Ash Wednesday Mass. Our Ash Wednesday Mass is at 9:30 AM at St. Peter.  All are welcome.  As was communicated in last week's Principal's letter, all Valentine's Day parties, with the distribution of candy, will be held on Tuesday.  This will explain to our students the importance of this most holy day and season as we prepare for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We will fully honor Ash Wednesday with abstinence from meat in the food menu for the day and no candy distribution within the classes.   We know many of our students give up chocolate or candy for Lent and we wish not to hinder these beautiful Lenten sacrifices by our children.

Just a reminder that this is a short week.  We are hosting a Diocesan Professional Day this Friday.  Over 500 teachers will be attending a day of learning, followed by a special liturgy celebrated by Bishop Barbarito.  We feel very privileged to host this event and to showcase our beautiful school.  This also translates to a four day weekend for our students as Monday is Presidents' Day.  Enjoy your time off.  We return with the desire to maximize learning and IOWA testing before the end of the quarter and Spring Break.

As we finish up our MAPS testing and teacher training for this second installment, student reports will be going home in student folders on Thursday.  Our school will be holding a seminar on MAPS and how to understand your child's data on Wednesday, February 28th at 6:00 PM.  We will be videotaping this seminar for those parents unable to attend.  However, I do stress the need for parental attendance as specific questions can be answered during the seminar, but not the recorded one.

Finally, as our School Advisory Council begins developing the school's new strategic plan, we must first begin with a survey.  We encourage all families to complete the survey by connecting to the link:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ascsparents1718. It is imperative we hear from as many people so that real data can be used to determine our goals for improvement.  It is completely confidential. As an incentive, we will provide each person a "No Homework Pass" which will be printable via link provided once the survey is completed.  Please make sure to copy and past the homework pass link into your browser to access and print the homework pass.  The survey will be open for the month of February.  Thank you for your contribution to the future of our school.