Tomorrow we will be starting our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday.  During Lent, I often reflect on a portion of William Arthur Ward’s poem that is always hanging on my fridge:

In a few days, I will be attending the annual Southwestern Alberta Teachers’ Conference Association convention this year virtually due to the pandemic.  I remember a past session I attended a few years ago featuring Dr. Eva Olsson.  She is a wonderous person, and she is a Holocaust survivor.  In 1944, at the age of 19, Eva and her family were forcefully moved from Hungary and shipped to various concentration and work camps, including the death factory of Auschwitz-Birkenau. She had the unfortunate experience of meeting the Angel of Death, Dr. Joseph Mengele.  Eva exhibited resiliency and survived; she was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen camp by British and Canadian troops.  Unfortunately, the only other survivor of the Holocaust was Eva’s younger sister.  The rest of her family perished.  After the war, Eva married and settled in Sweden.  With the fear of Soviet Union aggression, Eva immigrated to Canada. 

At the age of 96, Eva continues to share her story (www.evaolsson.ca). 

Dr. Olsson has many reasons to hate.  As a school administrator, I am privy to some hardships that students and staff have experienced, but nothing compares to Eva’s experience. There is no hatred in her voice; there is only acceptance and love.  She reminded me people learn to hate; they are not born with it.  If Eva can ‘fast from hate, and feast on acceptance,’ I believe we all can.

Please consider keeping the traditional practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving this Lent.  Still, as we hear about growing hatred and witness it creeps into the fabric of our Canadian identity, I challenge all of us to ‘fast from hate, and feast on acceptance.’  If Dr. Olsson, a Holocaust survivor, can do it, indeed we can.

Lenten blessings,

Greg Kostiuk

Good afternoon everyone,

Please read this letter from our Superintendent of Schools:

To give parents a better voice, we held a parent survey during January.  Although we have not started making any detailed plans for next year, the parent survey results will help us.  Here are the parent survey results:

Thank you for participating in the survey, and thank you for being part of our school community.

February 1, 2021

Catholic Central High is starting the process for our Grade 9 students to register high school. Like everything else this year, the pandemic will make this process somewhat different than previous years. Here is their plan:

• Online re-registration for current grade 9 students begins the week of February 1, 2021 https://www.holyspirit.ab.ca/schools/registration/current_family_registration
• Online registration for students new to our division begins February 22, 2021 https://www.holyspirit.ab.ca/schools/registration/new_family_registration
• CCH will be doing a virtual meeting with all our Grade 9 on-site students on February 10, 2021, at 1:30 pm. Students are in their homerooms for the virtual meeting. All on-site students must attend class at this time. After the virtual meeting, students will begin to fill out their course selection sheets with our FLVT teachers’ assistance.
• FLVT students enrolled in AHL will be part of the SFJH virtual meeting on February 10, 2021, at 8:30 am. These students need to arrange to pick-up the course selection sheets from FLVT beforehand.
• Students must fill out the online registration and the course selection sheets.
• CCH has a video that will be posted on their website.

Please read the below letter from CCH Principal Joanne Polec:

Dear Parents/Guardians of Grade 9 Students:

Your son/daughter will soon be embarking on the next exciting stage in his/her educational journey.  We are looking forward to welcoming these new students to Catholic Central High School (CCHS), and being part of their academic, spiritual, and social growth.  To help ease the transition from junior high to high school, and to ensure that you have all the information necessary to assist your child in making decisions, we invite you to view our parent information video that will be accessible on our school website https://cch.holyspirit.ab.ca/ by the first week of February and for the rest of the course selection period (until March 5th).  Please view the information video and take notes of any questions you might have. Should you still require further clarification, we will have a Google Form for you to fill out wherein we can gather common questions and proceed with a) creating Q&A documents; b) hosting a virtual platform (like a Google Meet or Zoom) to answer your questions; or c) scheduling a 1:1 appointment with you and your child, should that be required.

In the video, we will provide information about program selection and registration. Students are also welcome (and encouraged) to watch, although they will be receiving similar information during classroom Google Meets with Catholic Central administration. On February 10, 2021, CCHS administration will be meeting virtually, with your child with your child’s classroom teacher present to facilitate the process. FLVT will complete course selections from 1:30-3:00 p.m. Students will have program handbooks and a copy of their course selection sheets to bring home to you for approval. Please have all course selection sheets submitted back to your child’s school no later than Thursday, March 4, 2021.

In terms of how to register your child to attend CCHS, current Holy Spirit students will be completing a registration update (“re-registration”) form online. Students from our feeder schools (of which your child’s current school is one) will need to indicate the designated school as CCHS. The division is targeting February 1st for these registration update forms to roll out to you via email. Any students new to the division will need to wait until after February 22nd to register. Please note that course selections for CCHS cannot be completed until the registration update form has been submitted online. 

While we hope that the video, various ways of answering questions you might have, and the facilitated course selection sessions with your child should provide you and your child with the information you need to transition to high school, we recognize that this can be daunting. We are here to support and guide you through this in any way we can.

At CCHS, we believe that a culture of Rigor, Relevance and Relationships is essential to ensuring the success of all students.  We look forward to welcoming you and your child into our community.

Blessings, Joanne Polec – Principal

Please contact us or CCH if you have any questions.