catholic schools week

Local Schools Share Good News about Catholic Education

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 1/25/07)

It’s late January and Catholic schools are ready to party. As part of the annual Catholic Schools Week, Catholic schools around the country will observe “Catholic Schools: the Good News in Education” from Jan. 28 to Feb. 3 with homework-free days, concerts and open houses. Teachers, students, staff, priests, parents and volunteers will be honored with homemade cards, luncheons and special Masses. Students will get to wear jeans, their favorite sports jersey or “crazy hats.” The good news about Catholic schools is plentiful, and the 38 local elementary schools and six high schools are ready to shout it out.
“There are many wonderful things happening within the Catholic school system across the nation and there is good news to be sharing with all audiences,” said Sister Karl Ann Homberg, S.S.J., assistant superintendent of schools. Catholic Schools Week “gives us a wonderful way to showcase what we are doing within Catholic education.”
The seven-day affair is not all about early dismissals and eating pizza for lunch.
Youths at St. Andrew the Apostle School in Clifton will be rewarded for best exhibiting a chosen virtue.
“Every quarter we pick a different virtue and each teacher, beginning with kindergarten, is asked to nominate a boy and girl who have best shown that virtue,” said Mary Albanese, principal. The school then has a small ceremony where the students are presented awards.
St. Patrick School in Fredericksburg is having a weeklong drive to collect funds for diocesan seminarians. St. Thomas Aquinas Regional School in Woodbridge is hosting a “Souper Week for Super Students” food drive collection to be donated to the Our Lady of Angels St. Vincent de Paul Center. Many schools will honor the United States by wearing red, white and blue clothing or accessories. Students from Epiphany School in Culpeper will deliver “goodie baskets” to the post office, fire department, police station, mayor’s office and local newspaper.
“We try to connect the day with the community at large,” said Barbara Terry, principal of Epiphany School, who said students have been delivering these packages for six years. As a result, the youths receive letters, often take tours and “get a chance to really touch base with the community,” she added.
George E. Chiplock, principal of Corpus Christi School in Falls Church, will travel as part of the National Catholic Educational Association to the Capitol on Jan. 31, National Catholic School Appreciation Day, with faculty members, parents and a student delegation to lobby for support of Catholic schools.
The students, eighth-graders and high schoolers, will meet with staffers, educational liaison officers and perhaps congressmen to talk about federal funding for Catholic schools, tuition assistance and vouchers.
“I think (the students) get a good knowledge of certain issues that affect Catholic schools that the Congress has jurisdiction over,” Chiplock said. “It is a field trip for them to get to know the inner workings of a congressional office.”
Holy Cross Academy in Fredericksburg will hold a charity fund-raiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital with a math-a-thon and jump-a-thon in the school gym. Students will gather pledges ahead of time from sponsors, and each class will “adopt” a child at St. Jude’s.
“One of the important aspects of the Catholic school is to serve and reach out to others,” said Sister Susan Louise Eder, O.S.F.S., principal at Holy Cross. She said these types of service projects remind the students “that it’s important to think about others and to actually do something about it.”

Gretchen R. Crowe can be reached at gcrowe@catholicherald.com.