Principal News

A new school year has started at St Vincent de Paul Catholic! This year we celebrate our 63rd anniversary, more than sixty years of providing the best education possible to the population we serve.

I would like to clarify two terms I used in the sentence above. The first is “best education” because we are not talking of just academics. We are a Catholic school because we firmly believe that a Catholic education is what this world needs. It is first and foremost in our mission. Bishop Olmstead already stated it in his apostolic letter of March 2017 and we believe it. Our school has to be a place to encounter “the living Jesus Christ; to be places of Spirit-filled community” and to “impart a Catholic worldview through the curriculum”. And how do we do this? By bringing the best faith-filled educators together who share the desire to make a difference in the lives of these students. By creating the best safe environment where differences are accepted because we were ALL created in the image of God. By teaching the best curriculum we can where Catholic values and virtues are seamlessly integrated with the required academic subjects. This we believe and every year try to learn from the past.

Every year we look for the best way to teach. This year is no different. There are only two Catholic diocesan schools right now that are promoting a new approach to teaching called the La Salle Initiative. We are one of the two schools. Within the next couple of years we will implement “blended learning techniques” in all our grades. Our grading system has been already modified to support and provide the most accurate description of how the students are progressing. This is called “standards based grading”. Our students and our parents will know where the students are strong and where they need assistance in each academic subject.

We are enjoying the benefit of a new school building addition.  A brand new gym that allows us to compete in Volleyball and Basketball indoors plus it offers protection from the elements when doing PE for all students. The added classrooms help SVdP aim high at the future of education. With a room dedicated to STEM, we expect to be in the forefront of science, technology, engineering and math education at the elementary school level. But we are not satisfied with providing STEM classes. We transformed it into STREAM because we feel Religion and Art play an essential role in any academic program. We have a dedicated space for Art and one for Music. Subjects that in the past could only be offered inconsistently, are offered to the whole school. As you can see, we have high hopes for the future. We will not stand still.

A second point I want to clarify in my initial statement is the use of “population we serve” instead of student body. This is where we carry on the mission of St Vincent de Paul as he expressed it 400+ years ago. We are on a mission to help those who we serve. And it’s not just education nor is it just for our children. Did you know that we have had an adult English program for more than 10 years at our school? Parishioners, as well as our parents, have benefitted from this opportunity to improve their English. Thanks to the efforts of Volunteer teachers or contracted organizations, an average of 50+ adults have honed or learned their English skills with us every year. What about other types of help? This is where the offices I mentioned when describing the new building come in. The added office space will allow us to hire on a temporary or part time basis, para-professionals who can help our families with programs, information or advice that our limited space prohibited in previous years.

These are our attempts to provide direct help. There has also been through the years an education which does not show in books, or gets graded at the end of the school year. I am referring to the education of a community, from the parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and guardians who, with their children, learn about God every day. You can be sure that while these children are evangelized by their parents and teachers, the children ALSO evangelize their parents and teachers. This, in my opinion, is the best part of the Catholic education; the environment it creates. We are all free to practice our faith, grow in our faith, and share the sad and happy times in our faith together. We ARE St Vincent de Paul to each other! We carry St. Vincent’s spirit inside of us and share it with the rest of the world. That is why we are here. That is why this mission never ends.