Weekly Family Newsletter

We are a very blessed school!

We have such wonderful faculty and staff. We have wonderful students, parents, families, and donors. The word is getting out about SFSS and we are receiving quite a few inquiries for enrollment.

Thank you for spreading the good news about SFSS. Our goal this year was to grow the school and we are growing in many different ways. We started the year with 88 students and we have grown to 94 students as of today. We have grown our programs by adding back pizza Fridays, the beginning of a lunch program; and after school care. Watch us continue to grow!

I had hope to have the registration ready for today, but we are waiting on FACTS to finalize their end. So, stay tuned.

America Reads will be starting again. We have worked with HWS to fine tune the program to ensure students are receiving the best interventions and support. More information to come on this.

It's been a busy few weeks and we are getting more and more excited about Catholic Schools' Week. We have one more week to prepare. We will kick start that with the opening Mass presided by Most Reverent Bishop Matano on Saturday, January 28th at 4:30 pm at St. Francis Church. The bishop is very excited to come. I highly encourage everyone to attend. We have many of our students singing in the choir, reading, presenting gifts, greeting, etc. Students should wear their dress uniform to show their school spirit.

Below you will find some helpful information about upcoming events.

• Monday, January 23rd is an hour early dismissal for GENEVA BUS RIDERS only. Those only riding the bus that day.
• Please return the special person's lunch form by Monday, January 30th. We need to know for planning purposes.

As you have probably noticed, we are having two open houses. Wednesday, February 1st and Wednesday, March 1st from 6 pm - 7 pm.

We are encouraging each family to invite a prospective family or any family with school aged (3 year olds to grade 7) students to these two open houses. We have designed each night to be family events and opportunities for all families to explore our school and see what our programs offer.

February 1st will be visits to the classrooms, ice cream and popsicles, and our Scholastic Book Fair.

March 1st will be families will go to the classroom of their oldest child and play Bingo. Prospective families will go to the classroom of the class their oldest will attend with next school year. We have lots of prizes for everyone!

So, spread the word about our Family Night Open Houses and help our school grow!

Visit the book fair webpage for more information. https://www.scholastic.com/bf/stfrancisststephen

The Scholastic Book Fair to benefit our school library!

Students will get a day to preview and throughout the week shop for new books to inspire them to love reading. Families can send in money or add money to your child's e-wallet. Information for the e-wallet can be found below.

Also, on Wednesday, February 1st during the open house, our book fair will be open for all families to shop.

As mentioned in last week's newsletter, our library has been undergoing updates with entering books into our new online catalog system; barcoding for easy tracking and check out/check in; discarding tattered and outdated books; and reorganizing the library to make finding books easier for the students and teachers.

We want our students to enjoy their trip to the school library and be encouraged to fall in love with reading. Our Scholastic Book Fair will help immensely to help fill our shelves with books our students will love to read.

We need a few volunteers to help cash out students, reorganize the shelves, etc. If available and interested, please use the sign up genius below to volunteer.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/508094EA5A72DA5FE3-book

If you are doing some early spring cleaning and happen to have some children's arts and crafts supplies or card or board games that are no longer wanted, please send them to the school for our after school program.

It was a good weekend of the St. Francis St. Stephen Crusaders with an undefeated weekend.

The 3/4 Co-ed team was home against a tough St. Jerome’s squad. The Crusaders took the lead from the opening tap and were able to hold off St. Jerome’s to prevail 18 – 13. Carson Baxter led the Crusaders with 6 points and Joe Dorn chipped in 4. Jakub Miranda added a basket and had 5 rebounds. It was a solid defensive effort by the team to keep the Crusaders undefeated for the year at 4 – 0. The 3/4 Team will be back in action this Saturday on the road at St. Joe’s.

The 5/6/7 Girls team were on the road at St. Louis in Pittsford and the girls coasted to victory against a very young St. Louis squad. The Crusaders were lead by Kate Good with 10 points, Elizabeth Scibona with 8 and Natalie Dorn with 6. Francesca Calabrese got her first points of the season and Molly Lamson played many minutes of solid defense in the win. The girls remain undefeated at 5 – 0 and will be on the road this Saturday at St. Johns of Rochester in Fairport.

The 6/7/8 Boys were at home and took on St. Louis of Pittsford. The boys pulled out the victory 49 – 35. The Crusaders were led by Nick Dorn with 20 points. Thomas Hutteman had 8, Max Delgado 5, Roman Nearpass 5 and Domonic Petramale added 4. A good team effort on defense allowed the Crusaders to pull away in the 2nd half and improve their record to 4 – 2. The 6/7/8 team will be at St. Louis this Saturday.

All three Crusaders teams will be at home on Saturday January 28th. Starting at 9:45. Come on down to support the teams and enjoy something from the Crusader Café.

We are finalizing the application forms and tuition plans with FACTS.

As mentioned before, current families in preschool to grade 7 will automatically be enrolled in the FACTS student system on March 1st. If your family or a child in your family will not be enrolling for next year, please submit a letter saying as much to Suzanne Pohorence by March 1st.

The benefit of automatic re-enrollment is families are charged a $10 processing fee instead of the $20 processing fee new applications. There is still the $100 registration fee per child, $200 maximum per family.

Once the enrollment process has started, current families will just need to review the information provided to the school in the Family Portal under Web Forms and sign off. Then, you will need to complete the tuition agreement page. By doing this method, we limit the number of papers and forms needed to be submitted.

Tuition was increased by $100 to off set some of the increase in operating costs. We are ever so grateful for the Harry J. Touhey bequeath that kept this increase low. FACTS Management System is used for tuition payments, there will be a fee of $20 for annual and semi-annual payments made or $50 for quarterly or monthly payments made.

Again, financial assistance and scholarships are available for those who apply. More information on these will be provided once our registration materials have been finalized.

New families or family members who are not current students will be required to submit an application in FACTS to new enrollment. More information will be available on our school's website.