Dear SJV Families,

First I want to extend a warm welcome to our newly enrolled families. Thank you for choosing SJV. As any of our other families will tell you, SJV is a special place, and we are glad to have you in our community. Welcome!

I continue to receive admissions inquiries from interested families and I am giving individual school tours this summer, so if you know of someone looking for a school for their children, feel free to have them call the school office or visit the Admissions page on our website.

As the pandemic continues, I am sure that you have many questions about the new school year. Are we going back? What will it look like? The attached FAQ gives our current answers to those questions and more. I am very grateful to the SJV Reopening Action Team for their ongoing work in getting the school ready for the fall. While the FAQ shares with you our current plans about how we will go back to school this year, I also want to share with you the even more important question of why these measures will be taken.

St. John Vianney is organized around a root set of beliefs that are at the core of our faith and mission.

For instance, "We believe the purpose of Catholic education is to provide an atmosphere in which the Gospel message is proclaimed, community in Christ is experienced, service to our brothers and sisters is the norm, and thanksgiving and worship of God is cultivated."

In other words, we believe we are made for each other. We believe that we are better together, because we are a family; indeed, we are many parts of one Body of Christ. We believe that we grow in our relationship with God by learning about God’s creation: the world, the people in it, and ourselves. We are always learning and we believe that we learn better together.

These beliefs drive us to our shared purpose, which is our vision and mission: to form future leaders to transform the world. We form children to be faith-filled Catholics, lifelong learners, and contributing community members who strive to know, love, and serve God by knowing, loving, and serving others.

We learn better together. Our plan is for all students to return to face-to-face instruction in the school building, as we always do, preschool through 8th grade. The first day of class will be September 1. Our mission to ensure that your child flourishes compels us to take all necessary precautions to minimize the spread of COVID-19 within our community. Given the current public health conditions, these precautions will include wearing masks or face shields, distancing desks, screening students before they enter the building, and limiting school gatherings. We will publish our plans related to these precautions via these regular updates. Please watch your email. Because we learn better together, and we are confident that we can provide an excellent education in the faith while safeguarding each member of our community.

We are made for each other. This belief, and the latest scientific understanding of how the virus travels and infects individuals, will guide our decisions about which precautions to adopt. While children may not generally be sickened by the virus, they can carry and transmit it without symptoms. A student may carry it to school and transmit it to a classmate, who can bring it home and infect family members. While neither of these students may ever experience the illness, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members who live with our students who are susceptible to the disease may become seriously ill.

Our children and our community cannot flourish if the virus does. Our goal is to protect every member of our community by minimizing virus transmission from student to student at school. We will adopt precautions that are known to reduce the potential for virus transmission in our school community.

We are planning for a range of possible ways to educate your child this fall in order to ensure your children’s educational experience is as uninterrupted, rigorous, and rich as possible. While we pray for a year of in-person instruction at school for all, if the public health situation in our community requires that we make use of a backup plan to protect your children and our team, we will not hesitate to do so, just as we did not hesitate when our building closed in March.

We believe that we are made for each other. We love each one of you and each one of your children, and we are confident that we can provide an excellent education in the faith in each of these scenarios while safeguarding each member of our community. Just as Christ calls us to stop everything to protect one lost lamb from harm, we will do what it takes to take care of each other and we will be stronger for it.

We are always learning. In humility, we recognize that the public health situation may change rapidly between now and the start of school, just as it has since we last gathered in person in March. We also recognize that scientists are learning more about the virus and its spread, and the precautions we take will reflect both our learning and the current public health situation. Starting today, we will communicate with you every two weeks–more frequently if necessary–to ensure you are aware of our most current plans and any changes we make. We are always learning – about the virus, its transmission, and our community’s vulnerability–and we will adjust our plans as needed to ensure each child flourishes.

You will find more specific information about our plans in the attached FAQ document and in future emails.

I pray daily for you and your family, and I look forward to seeing you all again soon.

In Christ,
Deacon Nick Senger, Principal