The Principal’s April 2024 Newsletter

The mission of St. Joseph Catholic School is to use the knowledge of God’s love to educate the whole child by instilling strong moral values, respecting and serving our diverse community, and achieving academic excellence for future success.

Hello School Families,

Happy Easter to all-He is risen! I hope that everybody has had the opportunity to fully embrace Holy Week, the Triduum, and Easter with family over spring break. It is great to be back at school for the final two month stretch of the 2023-24 school year. It is a very busy time of the year, and I’m sure that the time will fly by! Our second grade teacher, Jennifer Howe, will be taking a personal leave for the remainder of the school, and our wonderful Andrea Wright has committed to teaching second grade for the final months of the year. We are overjoyed to have her in this position and she is excited to have the opportunity. As a component of this development, our terrific Maggie Carrasco will teach Spanish for the remainder of the year, and our dedicated Francisca Espinoza and Delia Torres will be helping in the preschool classes. We are extremely grateful for the amazing team we have at St. Joe’s! Following are additional school updates and news.

We thank Ms. Judith Torres and her 4th grade class for the beautiful job they did with the Stations of the Cross on Holy Thursday. The experience was spiritual and truly powerful. Please congratulate Lisa Cochran, our beloved 1st grade teacher, on her initiation into the Catholic Church during Easter Vigil Mass. We welcome her with open arms and are committed to supporting her and walking with her during her faith journey. Our annual Holy Apostles outreach Mass is planned for Sunday, April 21. We have our 4th and 5th grade choir, student readers and testimonials at the 9:00 am English Mass and the 12:00 pm Spanish Mass. Please join us for one or both of these Masses. Students in attendance, dressed in uniform, will receive a free dress coupon for a designated day in the future.

Teachers and students have been working hard in classrooms, and there is so much growth and learning happening in all classrooms with young and old. We as a faculty/staff are dedicated to continuous growth and learning just as we hope our students and families are. As mentioned before, we are going through the Magnificat Catechetical Program and have a season coming up next Friday focused on the Social Doctrine of the Church. We also look forward to our professional development session with Shanna Brooks, literacy director at the NCESD and her session about engaging strategies in the area of literacy. We will continue with our curriculum review and will be making some important decisions on ELA materials as well as middle school religion materials.

Middle school planning is moving forward, and we currently have 10 students fully enrolled and 2 in process. We would love to invite and welcome more students to our inaugural 6th grade class-please continue to spread the word about this amazing opportunity to those you may know! We have several jobs posted and have had an abundance of highly qualified applicants. We will interview candidates over the next couple of weeks and aim to offer contracts by the beginning of May. We should be in a position to announce 2024-25 teachers/staff by the middle of May.

We are certainly grateful to have the opportunity to embrace our ministry as a collective community at the school and we recognize the importance and great need for faith formation among our youth, young adults, and families. We are excited to collaborate with the church in this mission of evangelization and embrace the vision of unity and fellowship as we work to meet the needs of our growing population. I pray that your month is full of peace and joy!

Abundant Blessings-Lisa Martinez