Dear St. Francis of Assisi Families and Community,

It was beautiful to celebrate our All Souls’ Day Mass together as a school community yesterday. We are grateful to our pastor, Fr. Khanh for leading us in our Mass, and our music teacher, Ms. Auxier and our middle school choir for providing the beautiful music. We also thank our sixth-grade lectors and gift bearers, as well as our student altar servers, for their excellent participation.

Gathering in remembrance of those who have gone before us is an important way that we, as Catholic Christians, honor our deceased loved ones. We also continue to pray for them throughout the month by displaying their photos in our front display case. Thank you to those who have already brought in photos; we will continue to add them to our memorial.

As we begin a new month, a few important reminders:

• To help maintain a healthy school environment, please notify the front office and your student’s homeroom teacher if your student has an illness. Quick reminder, that students must be fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication before returning to school. 

• As the weather becomes colder, students should come to school prepared with a warm jacket and weather-appropriate shoes. We are hardy in the Pacific Northwest and will continue going outside—even when it rains—so please plan accordingly.

• We will soon test our emergency communication system by sending families a text message followed by an email. This system will be used to communicate during emergencies and weather-related schedule changes.

November includes the following non-school days: November 6 for the all-school faculty and staff Christ in the Classroom retreat, November 11 in observance of Veterans Day, and November 25–27 for report card preparation and the Thanksgiving holiday.

Thank you to everyone who completed the Parent and Guardian Standards of Excellence Survey. We received responses just shy of 50% of families, which will be valuable as we continue moving forward with our self-study accreditation process.