Absences or Late Arrivals: Please email: cgabsences@fmpsd.ab.ca if you are aware that your student will be absent or late. For early pickups or changes to pickups, families should contact the office via phone.
CG Gear: Our online store is up and running for the year. Check out https://christinagordon.entripyshops.com/ to order school clothing. There is a wide variety of styles, logos, and colours to choose from!
Hot Lunch Program: Hot Lunch ordering for the month of November is now open. Ordering will be open from the 1st to the 20th of each month in order to order for the following month. When placing your order you may notice a button to Volunteer for Hot Lunch days. Please consider volunteering to help sort and organize Hot Lunch from 11:30 am-12:30 pm. This program will not continue to run without the support of parent volunteers. To place your order click on the following link (https://christinagordon.hotlunches.net) and refer to the instructions below (Digital Take Home Folder). If you have any questions you can contact our Hot Lunch team at cgshotlunch@outlook.com.
Popcorn Day: Popcorn days are back on for the year and have been set by the Fundraising Association. Please note the following:
- Not all days are on Friday.
- There is no online payment for popcorn. Students can bring $2 to their classroom teachers.
- Students are welcome to pay for the full year in advance rather than trying to remember to pay each time. The remaining popcorn dates will be January 17th, February 6th, March 21st, April 3rd, May 23rd, and June 13th. There are 6 dates remaining. To pay for all dates, please send a total of $12 with your student.
The next Popcorn Day will be Friday, January 17th. Please send $2 to your student's teacher by Thursday, January 16th to order popcorn.
Alien Inline: As part of our Physical Education program this year Christina Gordon students from Grades K-6 will have the opportunity to enhance their physical literacy skills and locomotor abilities with the ever popular Alien Inline program. The residency will run from January 20-30th, with Family Nights taking place in the evenings of January 28th and 29th. Families will need to use the following Sign-Up Genius to book slots for this Family Night: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/9040F4DABAF2DA2FB6-alien#/. Alien Inline is a traveling inline skating program that brings inline skating gear to schools. Students will have the opportunity to learn and demonstrate varying forward and stopping strategies on inline skates as well as participate in a variety of skill testing fun games! This program is graciously covered by our wonderful Fundraising Association at Christina Gordon and thus is no cost to any student here. All students will be participating in the program. Attached is the modified Phys. Ed. schedule for their residency. Please take note of when your student has their session should you wish to send a helmet. While Alien Inline does provide helmets, students are STRONGLY encouraged to bring their own helmet if they have one. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact our Phys. Ed. teacher, Lindsey Greatrix (lindsey.greatrix@fmpsd.ab.ca).
Canadian Math Kangaroo Contest: This event will be occurring on Sunday, March 23rd, 2025. Information about the contest can be found at: Canadian Math Kangaroo Contest. For the Fort McMurray region, the contest will be hosted at Keyano College from about 10:00 am-12:00 pm. More specific details, such as exact start time, etc. will be shared with the participants closer to the date of the contest. This contest is for keen math students. The questions are very interesting but can also be very tricky. It may not look like a lot of the questions you tackle in class (old contests can be found at: Canadian Math Kangaroo Contest). To participate in the contest, students need to register by February 24th, 2025. Registration is through the Math Kangaroo website. There is a registration fee: $20 (early bird) if one registers by February 10th, or $25 until February 24th.
PowerSchool Security Incident: Further to the recent security incident involving PowerSchool, a software vendor which provides our Student Information System (SIS), we have concluded the analysis of our system at Fort McMurray Public School Division. It was determined that within the Student Information System, the student information “table” was downloaded by the threat. In that table is information for all students registered in FMPSD since 2015. This information includes:
- Names and contact information, including parents and emergency contacts
- Medical considerations (in some cases) such as details about asthma, diabetes, or allergies
- Birthdates
None of the following information was impacted:
- Passwords of students or parents
- Financial information (finance system is different from information system)
- Documentation such as birth certificates, study visas, etc.
- Photos of students
- Social Insurance Numbers (we do not collect this information)
This system is used to communicate all student data with the government, and we are unable to shut down student accounts. PowerSchool does not anticipate the data will be shared or made public, and they believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination. They have taken measures to contain the incident and have no evidence of malware or continued unauthorized activity in the PowerSchool environment. PowerSchool has since added additional security measures to prevent unauthorized access. We are sharing the following best practices to families:
Review email and social media accounts for unusual activity.
Regularly update passwords for all accounts, especially if the same password has been used elsewhere.
Use strong, unique passwords for each account, and consider a password manager for added security.
Wherever possible, add an extra layer of security by enabling 2-factor authentication.
Watch for phishing attempts. Look for suspicious emails, calls, or messages pretending to be from legitimate organizations. Do not click on unfamiliar links or share personal information.
We do not require that you share any unusual activity with us at FMPSD; the above is a reminder about best practices on the use of social media and internet security. We will share any new information or resources with you if PowerSchool provides any new information or resources. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Paperless Valentine's Day: As we approach Valentine's Day, we wanted to inform you that as a school, we continue to look for ways to minimize our environmental footprint. Every year, millions of valentines are exchanged, and most of them end up in the trash. This is also true of goodie bags that contain small trinkets such as stickers, erasers, etc. This results in a significant amount of waste that is harmful to the environment. We believe that it is important to teach our children about the importance of environmental conservation, and addressing this issue is one small step that we can take to make a difference. As we did last year, this year our classroom teachers will all be providing an alternative to Valentine's Day classroom exchanges. This may look different in each class, based on the age and interests of the students, and may include things such as :
a classroom Valentine's Day craft that is shared
A favorite book that all children may bring along to have signed by classmates
A Valentine's Day craft that students leave a kind note or message on
Digital valentines
etc.
Teachers will advise parents what their class will be doing in the next few weeks. While this provides an environmentally friendly option, and we encourage families to consider refraining from exchanging valentines in the traditional manner, we understand how this is an important tradition for many families. We will continue to allow students to exchange valentines with their friends as they have in the past. Our goal will be to move gradually away from this in time so that we can truly minimize our environmental footprint. We encourage you to talk to your children about the importance of protecting the environment and to find other ways to celebrate Valentine's Day that continue to promote the values of kindness and friendship while being more eco-friendly. Thank you for your understanding.
