St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Email: St.BernardofClairvauxInfo@dpcdsb.org
Website: https://www.dpcdsb.org/brnrd
Location: 3345 Escada Drive, Mississauga, ON, Canada
Phone: (905) 542-9203
Twitter: @StBernardDPCDSB

Daily attendance and punctuality are very important and all students should be prepared to start their day of learning on time and with their classmates.

Thank you to all parents who have been calling the school and using the Safe Arrival website or app when your child has been absent due to an illness or an appointment.

To use the Safe Arrival School Messenger program, use the link provided below or you can down load and install the SchoolMessenger app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Please note that SafeArrival uses the SchoolMessenger app.

Alternatively, you can call the toll-free number 1-844-435-3440. Listen to and follow the instructions to report an absence.

We continue to track students who arrive at St. Bernard of Clairvaux after our school start time. Our school times are 8:45 am for the morning and 12:49 pm for the afternoon classes. It is very important to be punctual for school at every grade level. The routine of being prepared for the beginning of classes on a daily basis ensures that each day gets off to a good start. Teachers often begin with an overview of the schedule and events for the day. Students who arrive even a few minutes late for school not only disrupt their classes but also place themselves at a disadvantage because they have missed valuable instructional time.

We ask for your continued assistance in ensuring your child/children arrive at school no later than 8:45 am.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux is an allergen aware school. We have a number of students in our school who have severe, life threatening allergies to peanuts, peanut butter, peanut oils, any peanut/nut by-products and dairy products. As in the past, we are asking you to not put any child at risk. Therefore, we are asking that peanuts, peanut butter, peanut oils, and peanut/but by-products not be brought into the school.

We are also asking parents not to send food items to school when celebrating your child's birthday. If you would like to send something, please consider alternatives such as pencils, stickers, etc.

We thank you for your continued understanding and support of the safety and well-being of all students.

Parents are responsible for ensuring that all medication and forms are updated annually. If your child requires medication, please have all the pertinent forms completed and returned with the medication to the office as soon as possible.

A reminder that students are not allowed to keep any medication in their desk, backpack or classroom (with the exception of a puffer or an epi-pen, if allergies are severe). All dispensing of medication (including Tylenol) requires medical permission and must be stored in the office.

Please use the link below if you need to update the medication on file or if you have any new medications that need to be dispensed at school.

Even when it appears insignificant, we inform parents/guardians of all reported head injuries at school. We do this in recognition of the potential danger of any injury involving the head area.

Our intent is not to alarm you, but to keep you informed. Please remind your child to let a staff member know if they bump their head or they get hurt at school.

If you are planning to move out of the St. Bernard of Clairvaux School area or you change your address within our boundaries, please let the office know as soon as possible.

Please keep us informed of any address, phone number or medical changes for your children. It is of the upmost importance that our records be up to date. If your child should get sick or hurt, we must have accurate contact information.

Thank you for continuing to follow our Kiss & Ride procedures and helping to keep everyone in our school community safe. Please see the following guidelines when using the Kiss & Ride program at St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Please Do

• Children are to be dropped off or picked up, using the drop off lane between the hours of 8:30 - 8:45 am and 3:15 - 3:30 pm. Due to the high volume of cars, especially in the morning, and dependent on the weather, please consider arriving early.
• As cars enter the school driveway, please proceed in a slow and cautious manner, around the parking lot. The drop off and pick up lane is directly in front of the kindergarten yard. Students are not dropped off or picked up in front of the school. This lane is reserved for buses only.
• Please drive up to the very top of the kiss and ride lane to drop off and pick up your children to facilitate a steady flow of traffic.
• Children are to exit the car in a safe and careful manner with their backpacks ready to avoid a long wait time in the drop off lane. Children are to exit the vehicle on the right side of the car, onto the landing, for safety purposes and proceed to their door.
• Cars are to exit the driveway in a slow and cautious manner and must turn right in order to ease the flow of traffic.
• Cars may park in the parking lot in available spaces only.

Please Don't

• Cars are not to enter the Kiss & Ride drop-off lane with any speed - they must proceed in a very slow and cautious manner.
• Do not park or leave your vehicle unattended in the Kiss & Ride lanes.
• Cars are not to stop at the turn point of the driveway and let children out - this is a very dangerous and unsafe practice. It also causes a back log of cars.
• Please do not attempt to move into the drop-off lane from the drive thru lane.
• Under no circumstances are cars to access the bus lane or park in the bus lane; if you need to leave your car, please use the parking lot.
• Please do not double park your car in the parking lot. For the safety of all, please use empty parking spots, or park on the street.

We thank you for your continued support in making our kiss & ride a safe and effective process.

The Multi Year Strategic Plan 2019-2023 has five core values that frame the essence of our work as a Catholic learning community: Believe, Excel, Respect, Thrive, and Trust.

Please see the link below for more information on Dufferin Peel's multi year strategic plan.

The St. Bernard team has created a learning plan that highlights a number of items used to monitor the impact of system actions to support the achievement of the system's goals throughout the 2022-2023 school year. Please visit our school website for further information on our plan.

The days are getting colder and it appears that winter has arrived. We ask that students dress appropriately with coats, hats, gloves, mitts, boots, snow pants etc. If they are dressed warmly, they are better prepared to participate in outdoor activities during recess and the lunch hour.

For health reasons and to help keep the school clean, we ask all students to have indoor shoes. Please note that in the event of an emergency evacuation, students will not have the opportunity to put their boots on. Thank you for your support in this matter.

Often during the winter season we have students, for various of reasons, coming to the office with wet clothes from playing outside during recess. We recommend, for the younger students, that you place an extra pair of pants, a shirt and socks in their backpacks. This would help to avoid bothering parents at work when these situations occur.

It is also recommended that students bring appropriate snow gear to school during these winter months (snowsuits, boots, gloves, mitts). Students are also encouraged to have waterproof mitts/gloves or else an extra pair should they become wet. Thank you for your support!

When the cold months arrive and snow and ice on the ground is plentiful, we all like to play in it and with it. Throwing snowballs and sliding on the ice is fun. However, as much fun as it is, snow and ice, can be very dangerous when lots of people are in a small area. In order for our school to be as safe as possible, the school rule must be that snow and ice stays on the ground.

There will be no snowballs, kicking snow or any other activity with snow or ice that could be harmful.

During the winter season, the school receives calls from concerned parents as to how we determine when children will or will not be allowed outside for recess. On extremely cold days, we limit the amount of time that students spend out of doors. We obtain our weather information from the Environment Canada Weather Information Line and follow School Board guidelines.

Board Guidelines indicate that students will generally be outside for lunch and recess when temperatures do not fall below –25 degrees Celsius, with the wind chill. With the exception of these occasions, all children will go out for recess and the lunch break. We remind all students to dress appropriately for the weather.

In pre-pandemic times, a bus cancellation would generally only affect students who took the bus to school. The school remained open, and classes/cohorts would be combined.

In our current COVID environment, we do not mix classes/cohorts. Therefore, if school buses are cancelled in a specific zone or in multiple zones, ALL schools in that zone will switch to remote learning for the day and the school will be closed to students for the day.

Please note: we are zone one.