Thanksgiving Outreach

Each year we ask our senior class to help out Upper Room's Mercy House Thanksgiving food distribution. Our seniors will work from 10:30am until 3pm unloading trucks and filling over 2,0000 bags of groceries for the less fortunate. It's a chance for them to "give back" to their community and learn about caring for and giving to others in their time of need.

This year is even more significant in the wake of Hurricane Sandy! Many here on Long Island remain without power or even find themselves homeless. Upper Room's Mercy House is a place where folks can come and receive food, advice and prayer. Each person goes home with a Turkey and 4 bags of groceries!

The distribution will start tomorrow and continue on Sunday. On Thanksgiving Day many of the students will come back as we prepare and deliver over 300 complete hot Thanksgiving dinners to shut-ins throughout the Long Island area. It is especially moving and impacting for our 19 International Students as many of them never saw anything like this in their country! We believe that part of being thankful is reaching out to those in need and knowing that "there but for the grace of God go I"!

Blessings!
Pastor Ed

Why Private Education?

Today we ask the question, "Why do more than 6,000,000 families in the US choose private education over public, charter or magnet schools"? The answers to this question are too numerous to answer here in one article but I'll try to list a few.

Private education is good for the students! Private schools benefit students by fostering academic excellence and high achievement, educating the whole child within a values-based setting, and preparing youngsters for success in life. If you want a caring, challenging, nurturing, safe and secure environment for your child--a place where he/she can learn and succeed--consider a private school.

Private education is good for the families! Private education benefits families by offering a wide range of educational options, including schools rooted in religious traditions, schools that provide intensive academic experiences, and schools that are specialized for specific populations. School choice, which should be every family’s right, enables parents to select an educational setting based on the needs of their children and their sense of what a school should be.

Private schools are good for America! As America’s first schools, private schools established our country’s foundation for education. Today, private schools help fulfill the American ideal of educational pluralism. Our nation is blessed by a rich diversity of schools. Whether public or private, these diverse schools constitute the American educational experience and share a worthy goal: the education of our country’s children. Private schools help educate the public—including students from a wide diversity of backgrounds, income levels, and ability levels—at considerable savings to taxpayers. They produce high-achieving students who make significant contributions to the country. And they strengthen their communities economically, socially, and educationally. Research shows private schools to be particularly effective in educating disadvantaged students. Minority students who graduate from private high schools are more than twice as likely to attend four-year colleges than their counterparts in public schools.

If you are interested in finding out more go to the Council for American Private Education's website at http://www.capenet.org/index.html . There you can find all of the data supporting what was said here.

Blessings,
Ed

"Smart Boards" in Schools

We took delivery last week on three Sharp Aquos 70" presentation "smart boards". These boards are 70" monitors that can do everything your computer or tablet can do and more. They interface with the new Sharp copiers we bought so a teacher can scan a document to the board, modify it using the collaboration of the group and send it back to the copier with all of the changes intact.

Teachers can also bring in digital media and broadcasts to augment the student's textbooks. The picture on these screens are crisp and the students love them! We have been using then all around the school. Below is a picture of Mr. Horodeski's computer class using the Aquos board while doing a mapping project.

We continue to move in the direction of digital learning with the additions of Ren Web, Moodle and "Smart Board" technology as major textbook publishers make less books and provide more digital learning tools.

Blessings!
Ed

Hurricane Sandy

The stop sign I'm holding was blown down by the biggest storm to hit Long Island in my lifetime. Hurricane Sandy made landfall Monday, October 29th at 6pm. As a result of this super storm our school was forced to close for a week! This is the first time in our 31 years that we were ever out of school for a weather related issue for more than 3 days.

While many of the local school districts (28) chose to remain closed yesterday due to extensive power outages, downed trees and power lines we were able to resume classes! We had 126 students attend (driven into school by their parents) and only two teachers were unable to get into work.

The forecasters are predicting a Nor'easter for tonight, into tomorrow and possibly continue through Thursday. We are in a wait and see mode to asses the effect this new storm will have on our Island and our ability to open for school. We continue to pray for all of the people affected by Sandy!

Blessings,
Pastor Ed