Principal Post

Principal Post, January 3, 2024

Dear Parents,

Happy New Year! We wish you and your families a blessed 2024! It is great to have the children back at school today.

Books, Resources and Apps

Thank you for partnering with St. Paul the Apostle Catholic School in your child’s education. We believe parents are the primary educator of their children, especially when it comes to their faith. Our goal at St. Paul’s is to provide a faith-based education that follows the Catholic Church’s teaching in all areas of faith and morality.

With that in mind, I want to let parents know that all our faculty and staff do their very best to preview all books, materials, and apps that the students use at school to ensure it aligns with our Catholic teachings. In our professional development meetings yesterday, we discussed best practices for reviewing and selecting curricular materials. We will continue to keep this discussion as a priority. Even with the amount that we monitor these materials, at times something may be inadvertently missed. If your child should bring home something that concerns you, please contact your child’s teacher. They are doing their best and would appreciate you reaching out to them.

Digital Resources – Digital Resources are constantly changing; therefore, we must continually monitor these resources. The apps we use are great learning tools. Because we use the free version of many of these apps, we do need to monitor the ads that appear. To eliminate ads, it would take quite a bit of our financial resources, for this reason we will need to remain vigilant.

School iPads – When at school, the iPads students use are filtered by our network filters. This is a very tight filter that hone in on keywords to filter out inappropriate content. When your child uses their school iPad at home, our network software doesn’t travel with them. The only filter is what you have on your home network. Keeping this in mind, if your child is using their school iPad at home, you will want to monitor what they are accessing.

ESA Families

ESA funding for 2nd semester is now available. The process to initiate funding is like 1^st semester.   

School action:

• SCCS will review tuition and fees for all current students and adjust the amount to be charged for 2^nd semester, if necessary. 
• In some cases, SCCS may add band, algebra, and/or sport fees, as well as PSAT and/or AP test fees. (These options were not available 1^st semester.) 

Parent/Guardian action:

• Odyssey will automatically notify you that an invoice is available to review
• Review the invoice at Odyssey. If you have questions, please contact Bobbie Goetsch at (studentaccounts@sccsiowa.com or 563-326-5313 ext 282) 
• To maintain ESA eligibility, approve payment through Odyssey https://iowa.withodyssey.com/ soon as possible. Our goal is to have 100% of our families accept 2^nd semester tuition and fees by January 10th. 

Early Outs, Days Off and Fun Events

January 12 – 2-hour Early Dismissal, End of 1^st Semester

January 20 – Spruce Up the School

January 28 – Catholic Schools Week Open House

Julie C. Delaney, PhD

Principal

St. Paul the Apostle Catholic School

1007 E.Rusholme

Davenport, IA  52803
563-322-2923

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 

 in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." 

  Proverbs 3:5-6