Dear SJF Families,
I'm writing to you today with an important announcement and to ask for your assistance.
Ever since joining the Fisher family as a parent four years ago, I have had an appreciation for the quality of the education and the sense of community my children have experienced here at SJF. That appreciation has only grown since becoming more involved in the daily life of the school first as a teacher and for the last few months as Principal. My gratitude especially for the contributions of the many talented, dedicated people - students, teachers, parents, volunteers alike - that truly make us a "Catholic Community Like No Other" can't be expressed enough. You all inspire me to do everything I can to keep our school and our students prepared for the future without losing the unique strengths our faith-based and tradition-filled mission offers them today.
In that spirit, I am very excited to announce the public launch of a strategic planning effort for our school. For the last several months, members of the School Board have been hard at work in the background laying out a formal process to help me and the entire SJF community begin identifying and prioritizing some long-term goals for the school. We now need your support of two near-term initiatives to get this process kicked off right:
1. Completion of the 5Essentials Survey: SJF is providing teachers, parents, and students the opportunity to participate in a 5Essentials survey pilot program through the Archdiocese. This survey has been developed by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and gathers data related to research-tested factors that can predict important elements of student outcomes and overall school success. This survey will be conducted May 1-May 31. Your honest, prompt participation in the survey would be greatly appreciated and is strongly encouraged. All responses will be kept completely confidential and will never be connected to you or your child. To take the survey, please visit https://survey.5-essentials.org/archchicago/survey/parent/. I'd ask that only one parent/guardian from each household complete the survey on behalf of your family. It should take no more than 10-15 minutes to complete. If you have any questions about the survey or you do not want your child to participate (all students in grades 4-8 will be given the opportunity to also complete the survey themselves in school), please let me know or feel free to e-mail dmaxwell@sjfschool.net.
2. Attendance at one of two planned Desserts & Discussion roundtable events: In addition to the 5Essentials survey, the School Board welcomes your qualitative input into our planning process and your ideas for school improvement. To help facilitate that feedback, we have scheduled two discussion forums on Tuesday, May 14th at 7p and on Sunday, May 19th after 10a mass. We will kick off both events with a brief overview of why we want to create a strategic plan in the first place, what the proposed planning process looks like, and who's involved. The main purpose of the meeting, though, is for School Board and strategic planning committee members to simply listen and be sounding boards for your ideas, concerns, and questions around five main topic areas: academic advancement and curriculum, school mission and culture, financial health and fundraising, campus space planning and maintenance, and school communications and marketing. We'll send out some more details and conversation starters closer to the events. For now, please save the dates, so you can join us, and if you know you'll be in attendance, please register at http://bit.ly/SJFRoundTable. Coffee and sweet treats will be provided.
No doubt, lots more is to come here, but I'm hopeful these two initiatives will go a long way to successfully launching our planning efforts before this school year is out. To do so, they will require the interest, involvement, and investment of the entire community, so please participate and engage with the process as much as you can and encourage others to do the same. Thank you in advance for your time and attention. I really think this process will help us maintain SJF’s track record of academic and social success in the near-term while ensuring the strength and vitality of the school for years to come.
Finally, should you have any questions, would like to get more involved in the process yourself, or have feedback for us you won't be able to provide via the survey or at a scheduled roundtable event, feel free to let me know or reach out to the planning committee OR Joan Rogers and Joe Goldrick who are co-chairing the planning committee for the School Board] at sjfspc@gmail.com.
We always welcome your input!
Mrs. Maura Nash
Chicago Archdiocese would like to continue connecting with you via email. If you prefer to be remove