St. Jerome School Weekly Newsletter

From Mr. Merrick

Dear St. Jerome Families,

We are grateful for all of the support of the St. Jerome Parish community in coming out and supporting our annual St. Jerome Festival. We were able to quickly adapt to the changing weather and make for a fun and meaningful afternoon! We are thankful to our Festival Committee (led by Mrs. Carolan), our staff, and all of our volunteers who worked together to make the day possible. We hope you all will join us next year! Festival t-shirts are still on sale and may be worn on any St. Jerome Spirit Day.

Thank you for your generosity with last week's St. Jerome Spirit Day. We raised 373.00, which our Student Council will use to plan school-wide service activities.

It looks like the weather will be fluctuating greatly as the remnants of the hurricane move out, with tomorrow and Friday predicted to be quite warm. Therefore, the students still have the option of summer uniform. Please use your judgement in having your child wear the summer or winter uniform, based on the weather. Winter Uniforms will be required as of November 1st.

If you ordered school pictures, they are being sent home today (8th grade photos, however, are not in yet). We will let you know the re-take day as soon as we have it from Tipping.

Our Family Connections Liaison, Miss Melissa, has arranged for two presentations from the Attorney General's Office in October for our students about staying safe on the internet. They have a presentation geared toward the younger students as well as one for our middle school students. She is also working on having them put together a virtual presentation for parents. More information will be sent home as we get closer to these presentations. Please also make sure to monitor and check your child's use of tablets, phones, and other electronic devices. There are so many benefits to the connectivity that the Internet brings, however, there is also so many places online where children can get into trouble or be exposed to inappropriate content.

Fr. Reilly celebrated our September School Liturgy for the Feast of St. Jerome. We appreciate our Student Council Members who served as readers and gift bearers. We also had Kyla (St. Lucy School 8th Grader) who shared her talents with us by playing the hymn for the preparation of the gifts.

Following the liturgy, we installed our Student Council for the 2022-2023 school year:

Officers: Caiden Rivera, Colin Schultz, Matthew Cancelliere, Olivia DellaVecchio, Ariela Profka, Kierah Wisniewski, Liam Platowski, and Hannah Grogan.

Representatives: Delanee Malin, Kaitlyn Berry, Mya Applebaum, Emmanuel Kamara, Akeem Twegby, Camryn Williams, Regan Moore, Brendan Vena, Madison Wnek, and Katelyn Fitzhenry. In addition, Erin Morris will represent the students of St. Lucy School.

We look forward to their leadership and carrying out their many exciting ideas over the course of the school year.

We also recognized our Students of the Month for August and September, who were selected for demonstrating the virtue of charity:

St. Jerome School: Kailani Squitiere, Kevin Paone, Joshua Chattley, Jr., Olivia Bascom, Brayden O’Brien, Lily Banas, Nicholas Halbherr, Kayla DuBeck, Ryan Chiaccio, Ava Achankunju, Joseph Barnes, Cambree Kelly, Salvatore Johnson, Jr., Arianna Kehl, Bryce McDaniels, Sophie Wimsey, Kelvin Wang, Kaitlyn Berry, Justin Perry, Camryn Williams, Jacob DeOliveira, Brynn O’Donnell, and Caiden Rivera.

St. Lucy School: Savannah Barrett, Ariana Medlin, Ahziyah Kithcart, Matthew Coghlan, and Erin Morris.

Our virtue for October is friendship.

Unfortunately, our Villanova Volunteers were unable to help us this weekend, due to the weather. We will work on completing the projects that they would have done as we have time. We hope to have them back next fall.

Our parish Director of Faith Formation, Janet Fiatoa, is available to help with students who have not yet been baptized or have not received their other sacraments with their classmates. Please fill out the form here if you are interested in learning more about having your child baptized. Please contact her (dff@stjeromechurchphila.org) with any questions.

Have a great week; St. Jerome and St. Lucy, pray for us!