Thank you for being part of our learning community.  The 2018-19 school year has been terrific, and we are now planning for the 2019-20 school year. Returning your form right away will ensure placement for your child at Father Leonard Van Tighem School and helps us prepare for the coming year. We would appreciate the registrations being returned to the school office as soon as possible, but please ensure they are returned by March 29, 2019. If your child will not be attending this school next year for any reason, please indicate this on the form and also return it to us. Please see instructions below for filling out your registration as there have been some changes to our student information system.

Alberta Education requires that parent/guardians complete a registration update form annually.  To accommodate changes within the software, we have been updating the new contact area in PowerSchool (our student information system).  Previously each contact was a separate entry for each student. As a result, each contact was entered multiple times into the system. Now each contact will be in the database only once and potentially tied to many students.

As this is still a work in progress, we need your assistance in ensuring that we have accurate contact information in our software.  When reviewing and updating the registration update form, we ask that you confirm that all the following contact information is completed:

1. Both a home and mailing address is entered for parent/guardians. Addresses will be displayed for additional contacts if you have provided it or if that contact is also a parent in our database.
2. Please enter the home, work and cell numbers that are available for each contact.  We require at least one phone number per contact.  We also request that you provide the best daytime phone number for each contact.
3. Do not combine multiple people into one contact line. Please have only one person per contact entry.  We now can enter an unlimited number of contacts so if you require more than the five spots available, please attach a list with the additional contact information.
4. Please ensure your contacts are in the priority you would like. Please renumber the order with contact priority if needed.
5. If the relationship has ‘Not Set,’ that indicates that the information has either not been provided or has not been entered.  Please record the relationship.
6. Please check all information on the registration form and make any changes as necessary. Please also ensure you check off the proper boxes for the annual declarations (Aboriginal status, Francophone eligibility) and sign and check off all areas on the flip side of the registration.

We appreciate you taking the extra time to review and complete this vital information.  If you have any questions, please contact the school.  Thank you again for being part of our learning community.

Respectfully yours,

Greg Kostiuk

Principal

On Wednesday, March 6, we begin our Lenten journey as a community with our Ash Wednesday Service. Two common themes connected to lent are ‘fasting’ and ‘being a better person.’ The second theme reminded me of a specific personal experience.  Once a week, I take part in a Pray and Play prayer group.  We meet at St. Martha’s Parish, pray the Rosary, and then we go to play hockey. Pray and Play is a great opportunity to gather as part of a faith community.  After one game, I was greeted by a homeless man at the arena asking for money.  I politely declined, as I truly did not have any spare change on me.  Soon after, the homeless man asked me for a ride to the homeless shelter.  I made an excuse that I was driving in the other direction.  I was not ‘being a better person.’

I often ask students to be nice.  Some have described me as a nice guy.  When did Jesus ever mention being nice to others?  When did Jesus ever ask us to be a nice?  I once read:

God does not say: “I was hungry, and you felt sorry for me.  I was naked, and you felt embarrassment.  I was sick, and you had feelings of sympathy toward me.”  All of which would have been simply nice. (Author Unknown)

Jesus does not want me to be nice to my neighbour; he wants me to love my neighbour—all of my neighbours.  He wants the hungry fed, the naked clothed, and the abandoned cared for.

Now, back to my post-hockey experience.  I was polite, but I was not even nice. Had I given the homeless man money, that might have been a nice gesture; but I do not think that could be called love. A ride to the homeless shelter?  We all have to make decisions and safety must be a factor, but on that night I did not exhibit love.  How hard would it have been to ask one of my fellow Pray and Play members—members of a faith community—to join me in giving a homeless man a ride to a shelter?  In my opinion, Jesus would have supported loving actions even more than prayer.  For my inaction and my cowardice, I asked forgiveness.  Faith must be a verb that demonstrates action.  During Lent I want to take up the challenge of ‘being a better person.’  I need to do this, not in a polite way of being nice, but in a challenging form of showing love.

During our Lenten journey, I invite everyone, with God’s help, to become better people.  Our three traditional practices during Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving can help us become a better person.  During his Sunday sermon, Deacon Michael reminded us we could fast from certain things and to feast on others.  On example he provided was we can “fast from judgement and feast on caring.”  This Lent, I will fast from merely being nice, and feast on loving action.  This Lent, I hope to ‘become a better person’ by going above and beyond being nice by showing loving actions to my neighbours. All my neighbours.

Lenten blessing,

Greg Kostiuk