Principal’s Message

posted by Mrs. Davis on Thursday, August 12th, 2010

The 2010-2011 school year will soon begin.  Our first day of school will be on Tuesday, August 24^th.  All parents are invited to  join us for Coffee and Doughnuts in the hall from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.  School will begin at 7:50 a.m. and dismiss at 12:35(Grades K-4 and carpool students/12:45 p.m. (Grades 5-8) all week.  Morning and afternoon day care will be available for the first week of school.

This promises to be an exciting and full year for our school community.  Our school will undergo accreditation this February.  Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are accredited by WCEA (Western Catholic Educational Association) and WASC( Western Association of Schools and Colleges).  Last year the faculty and staff began  working on the self study and will continue this process this fall.  This new protocol is entitled Improving Student Learning . The basic concepts addressed in this new protocol focus upon assessment of student success in meeting School wide Learning Expectations (SLEs), Arch/diocesan curriculum standards, and other governing authority expectations. These basic concepts are:

To what extent is Catholic Identity infused into the total school program?

To what extent are the students achieving the SLEs?

To what extent are students mastering the essential academic content standards?

To what extent is there evidence of adequate ongoing academic growth for all students?

To what extent does the school support high achievement for all its students?

To what extent is assessment data being collected, disaggregated and analyzed? To what extent are student learning decisions being made based on the analysis of the assessment data?

Last year the faculty and staff revised the School wide Learning Expectations with a focus on making them more measurable.  Please review our SLEs—listed on this page.  The faculty and staff in conjunction with the  Father Mark and the school board, also revised the OLPH Mission statement.  The revised statement is listed above. We welcome any parental input on these two foundational documents of the school.  We will share more accreditation news as the year progresses.

This year we welcome two new teachers to the OLPH School community: Miss Kathryn Lang—who will be teaching grade 7 homeroom and Mr. Eric Olsen who will be teaching upper grade Language Arts, Social Studies and Math.  See a list of all faculty and staff in this newsletter.

During the summer we have done some refurbishing of some of our classrooms.  To accommodate our double 5th and 7th grades and enhance our existing programs we have moved locations of some classrooms. The  science lab has been relocated  near the jr. high classrooms and we will now have an art room (in the former science lab).  Our new library is located in the computer lab, which is now our Media Center. The class of 2010 gave a lovely gift of saint Icons to the school.  One of these icons will be placed in each room and that classroom will be named accordingly.

This year Day Care will be provided by the school. We are fortunate to have Mrs. Diane Garcia, the former ADESTE supervisor, continue in her role as the OLPH Day Care supervisor.  She will be joined by two assistant teachers, Mrs. Lydia Hernandez and Mrs. Laurie Vasquez.  The new location for Day Care will be the Parish Center Chapel and adjoining rooms.  We are excited about our new OLPH Day Care Program.  Day Care will be available beginning on the first day of school at 6:30 a.m.