St James Catholic School
Ajax, ON
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Welcome back to St. James! Bienvenue à St James! And a special welcome to those families who are new to our school. We are excited to count you as part of our St. James C.S. family! You are becoming part of a very vibrant and diverse community, where students, staff, parents and Parish all work together to ensure your child's success.
We hope you enjoyed your summer and are rested up and energized for a new school year. This year marks the Year of Love in the Durham Catholic District School Board. Pope Francis says that “real love is about loving and letting yourself be loved.” No other time does that ring more true than right now as we continue to deal with out health crisis and social unrest. Together with our new Pastor, Fr. Chris and our associate Pastor, Fr .Raymond, we hope that your child will experience many hopeful and loving moments throughout the school year.
Stay updated and in touch! We have moved away from a paper newsletter and we keep our website updated with a calendar and news items. Please see information on how to subscribe to our webpage at http://stjames.dcdsb.ca
As you can appreciate, many of our events have been postponed due to the pandemic, but we will keep you informed of any upcoming events. We have also moved away from a paper agenda for students. We are now using EDSBY, the communication platform that we used for our distance learning, so please use EDSBY to communicate any messages to teachers. We will also use email and synervoice messages to communicate so please ensure that we have your updated email and phone numbers.
This is the time of year when you'll be receiving a variety of information and/or forms to fill out. It is imperative that you check your child's agenda and/or backpack on a daily basis. The school requires certain information to keep your child safe. By the end of the first week, your child will receive a Student Information Form. Please complete it and return it to the school by Monday, September 21 so that we can update your child's information in our system.
We are a nut-aware school! Please do not send your child with any food containing nuts or nut products. We also have a variety of other serious food allergies among our students. The only outside food allowed in our building is snacks and lunches. Please do not send any other food for celebrations or other reasons. We recommend sending stickers, pencils, erasers, etc to recognize birthdays or other events.
For safety reasons, students are NOT permitted to leave the premises at lunch unless they are going home for lunch or leaving with a parent. This includes our Grade 7 and 8 students. Going into the community for lunch enlarges our ‘bubble’ and puts us all at risk. Please let the teacher know ahead of time if you will be picking up your child or if they go home for lunch.
Student drop-off for drivers continues to be at our kiss n ride locations: kindergarten at the front of the school and Gr 1-8 at the back of the school along with walkers. Please use the kiss ‘n ride as it was intended and leave yourself some time for drop off. Please note that staff cannot open doors for students due to health concerns. Parking in the back is reserved for staff only. Parking and walking your child to the yard is NOT permitted and is actually unsafe because doing so would require you to walk between moving cards. Please do NOT use the front entrance at any time. If you are picking up your child early or need to see a staff member, you must call the office to schedule it ahead of time and you will need to wait outside. Please stay out of the bus zone.
If you have any questions, contact your child’s teacher or a member of our administrative staff. We're committed to helping our students achieve their goals.
À bientôt!
Partners in Christ,
G. Borg. E. Glover
Administrative Team