Administrators Message Dear Parents & Guardians, Spring is finally here! The extra daylight time and greening of the trees and fields gives renewed hope and excitement. Every day feels like summer is almost upon us. A big thank you to our School Council for purchasing brand new replace-ment iPads for our grade 1 classes and for adding a set of chrome books to our grade 2’s. All the hours of volunteer prep work that many of our parents dedicated to our casino is appreciated. We also want to thank them for supporting our garden and outdoor classroom initiative. We will be dedicat-ing this space in honour of Mme Weis with the support of our parent coun-cil. Stay tuned for more information in June. Registration for next year is well underway. We have filled a morning French Immersion kindergarten class and have opened a second class in the afternoon. We are extremely pleased to be welcoming over 80 new kin-dergarten students next year in both of our programs. In May, we also celebrate Mother Mary as a school division but also as a community since she is who our school is named after. We ask Mother Mary to continue looking after our community for the rest of the year. We wanted to wish Mrs. Bell and Mr. Bennett good luck on their new jour-neys in the fall. Mrs. Bell will be moving to St. Lucy Elementary as the as-sistant principal and Mr. Bennett who will be joining the community of St. Stanislaus also as the assistant principal. We thank them for their time here at OLOP and know that they will be welcomed at their new schools with open arms. We wanted to also let you know that Mme Doucet has been ap-pointed as assistant principal of OLOP for the next school year. We are ex-cited that Mme Doucet will be joining the administrative team to continue all of the great work that we do here. Have a wonderful month. Yours in Catholic education,

Mme Nicole Falcone-Dempsey Mrs. Shelley Bell Mr. Russell Bennett Principal Assistant Principal Assistant Principal

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A Spring Prayer

Loving God, we live in the mystery of the new life you promise in Je-

sus and the new life that surrounds us every spring. Help us connect

with people we don’t usually see.

Make us one whole and holy people.

Amen

Important Dates 2

COVID Screening 3

Parent Information 4-6

Chief Superintendent 7

Chaplain Message 8

Calendar 9

Inside this issue:

École Our Lady of the Prairies

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram—@OLOPecsd

JUNE 2021

June 18 Grade 6 Farewell and Year End Celebration

June 20 Father’s Day

June 21 National Indigenous People’s Day

June 24 Full Day for Kinder English and Grade 1-6, Last Day of class French Kinder

June 25 Last Day of School for English Kindergarten and Grade 1-6—Report Cards go Live at 3:00pm on Power School

June 28 Staff Only in school

MAY 2021 May 5 HATS ON FOR MENTAL HEALTH

May 9 Mother’s Day

May 10 SAC Annual General Meeting—

May 24 Victoria Day - No School

May 26 Gr. 6 Round #2 Immunizations

ONLINE PARENT PORTAL LOG IN INFO

If you do not have access to the Power School Parent Portal at https://powerschool.ecsd.net/public/ please call the school for assistance and we will provide you with log in information. Once you receive your Parent Portal Login User ID and Password from our office, please go in and verify your child’s 2020-2021 registration. Some Important Items done on Power School: Registering for Grade 7 and the 2021-2022 school year. (Essential and crucial to ensure stu-dents are registered for the next school year. Fee Payment — All school fees have been post-ed to all students power school accounts. At school and remote students have fees to pay. To see the breakdown of fees, visit our school web-site. Fieldtrip Payments (Our fieldtrips are hosted on a user pay model, meaning that students are ex-pected to pay for the cost of the fieldtrip per their attendance.) Some fieldtrips are sponsored by the school council, should they choose to help support that. Ongoing Reporting & Assessment ( As indicat-ed in swift message, instructions on how to log in and view your child’s report card has been sent out, as such, please refer to that document for ad-ditional information.) Transportation Information (This applies to fam-ilies riding bus, who are required to pay for a monthly pass.)

SCHOOL ADVISORY COUNCIL The next OLOP School Council Meeting/AGM will be held on May 10 at 4:30pm. All parents are welcome to attend. The meeting will be held via zoom. Zoom link will be sent via email one week prior.

PATHS IN OUR SCHOOL

Parents…..do you ever experience the sit-uation where you ask your child why they are upset, but they don’t answer? Just like adults, children of middle elemen-tary years often need time to be alone and think about what they are feeling or experi-encing. They may not want to feel rushed or they may not be ready to share. Let them know that you are available when they are ready to talk. When the child does begin to discuss his/her feelings, let them know you are listening by using eye con-tact, nodding as he/she speaks and using comments such as “I see.” This is showing them that you are present and care about what they have to share. This supportive approach helps to build a stronger relation-ship amongst you and your child.

PARENT INFORMATION

COBBS BREAD CALLINGWOOD & GRANVILLE

Our Lady of the Prairies continues to have a partnership with COBBS bread in Callingwood Plaza and West Granville. When you purchase any items from them mention Our Lady of the Prairies School and that your children attend here and they will give us 5% back to use towards technolo-gy purchases. Every little bit helps, so please help us out with this endeavor.

REGISTRATION FOR 2021-2022

Registration is well underway. If you have a child entering kindergarten visit ecsd.net to register your child. We still have a few spots in our afternoon French Kinder class.

May 2021

“Education is a dynamic reality, it is a movement that brings people to the light. It is a peculiar kind of move-ment, with characteristics that make it a dynamism of growth, aimed at the full development of the per-

son…” (Pope Francis, Address to Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Catholic Edu-cation, 02/20/20)

The month of May is one which is very special for Catholic schools in Alberta. This month, beginning May 10, we celebrate Catholic Education Week. The pinnacle of this week is the celebration of World Catholic Educa-tion Day on May 13. Our students will have ample opportunity over the course of this week to explore the rich-ness to be found in our Catholic schools. It is a time for families to reflect on the gift of publicly funded Catholic education in Alberta. We encourage everyone to wear blue in support of Catholic education over the course of the week. Please also keep your eyes on our social media accounts for our annual Humans of ECSD cam-paign; we are so proud to share some exceptional stories of the students of Edmonton Catholic Schools! On March 15 and 16, 2021, the Board of Trustees engaged with the executive members of our School Coun-cils and the administration teams of our schools to gather insights on the four Board Priorities for our various planning endeavors. This rich opportunity for stakeholder engagement was the first of its kind for our Division and provided invaluable feedback on the practices and supports that our families feel are of greatest value in the education of their children. The four priorities are Growing in Faith, Student Success, An Excellent Place to Work and Learn, and Building our Future Together. The report for the Community of School Councils (COSC) was presented at the Public Board Meeting on April 28 and can be found in the Board Agenda Package by clicking here and scrolling to the report. The overarching themes from this engagement were used at the Divi-sion level to inform the Division Plan for Continuous Growth and the Division Budget. Individual schools will use their specific results to inform their School Plan for Continuous Growth and their School Budget. The April 28 Public Meeting of the Board also saw our Board of Trustees naming our new schools which were announced by the provincial government last year. In January, we asked our students, staff, and the great-er community for help naming them. We received more than 300 submissions. We are delighted to share that these schools will bear the names of two lifelong advocates for Catholic education: Joan Carr Catholic Ele-mentary/Junior High School (Keswick) and Father Michael McCaffery Catholic High School (Heritage Valley). We are looking forward to welcoming our junior and senior high school students back to in-person learning af-ter another hiatus from the classroom. It is never an easy decision to move to a virtual learning environment. Like our students, we all long for normalcy, certainty, and routines to return to our educational system and look forward to being together again. May is a time to celebrate and give thanks for the mothers and maternal figures in our lives, and it also a time where we turn our eyes to our Holy Mother. Mary, Mother of God is the benefactor of Edmonton Catholic Schools. “(She) reminds us to be constantly attentive to the Christ-centeredness of Catholic education. She also reminds us to give ultimate respect to all persons in recognition of their dignity as daughters and sons of God, made in the image and likeness of the Creator and Giver of all good gifts.” (Edmonton Catholic Schools, Holy is Thy Name, 2017) Have a glorious May! Sincerely, Robert Martin Chief Superintendent

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MENTAL HEALTH WEEK