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Dear Families,
What a joyous Catholic Schools Week it has been! We have had so much fun celebrating who we are and why we are here. I am very proud of this community and what it represents.
We opened the week with a prayer service organized by students on our Faith In Action Team (FIAT). They reminded us of the special reasons for Catholic schools. Each morning we also prayed for other Catholic schools in Vermont. This helps our students know there are many students throughout the state sharing our mission.
Wednesday was packed with activities. We started the morning with a Community Breakfast for students, families and friends. Many thanks to all who contributed food, beverages and labor. As one of the organizers said, it was a replay of the loaves and the fishes story in the Gospels -- somehow the food just kept appearing and multiplying! We also had a ceremony to recognize Nancy Trono. nancy has been volunteering in our library for 20 years. There was a proclamation declaring February 1st as Nancy Trono Day. She was presented with flowers and a brick, in her honor, for the Cross Walkway, and she was serenaded by the entire student body.
Following the breakfast, our older students attended Mass at St. Joseph Co-Cathedral in Burlington with Bishop Coyne and hundreds of other Catholic school students. SFX School also hosted an Open House on Wednesday and we had many visitors throughout the day. It was by far our most successful Open House ever and many of the visitors commented on the excellent behavior and enthusiastic spirit of the students they observed.
On Thursday, Fr. Gratton spoke with older students about his vocation journey and today we are closing Catholic Schools Week by collecting soup that will be donated to the food shelf. This type of selfless act epitomizes what an amazing community we have.
We also took time this week to express our gratitude to some of the people who give of their time to support Saint Francis Xavier School by creating a wall of thank you “fish notes” with names of our staff and volunteers. If we had more time and fish I would put each and every one of your names on the wall, as I know how much you all do to make this school such a wonderful place.
I want to remind everyone that school is closed on Monday to celebrate our hard working staff for all they do and have done this week. It might also make Monday morning a little easier for those students who manage to stay up to watch the entire Super Bowl :).
I will end with a quote from Monsignor's homily during our Catholic Schools Week Mass: “What we are in the eyes of God is what we will always be and nothing more.” Thank you for being who you are and for your commitment to Saint Francis Xavier School.
God Bless,
Eric Becker
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We’re getting ready to start our next Box Top Competition. We’ll be collecting from January 23rd until February 10th. The two classes that bring in the most Box Tops (averaged per student) will win possession of the Traveling Trophies. Please send Box Tops to school in a baggie or envelope marked with your child’s grade or teacher’s name. Our last competition resulted in more than 4000 collections. Let’s see if we can do it again this round. If you have any questions or would like to know which products carry Box Tops, please go to
