We have had a very good start to the school year so far, and our staff are doing a great job keeping our schools healthy, clean and safe.  All of our COVID safety protocols appear to be working and we are so grateful to all our staff and students.

Last Thursday (September 24^th), Region of Waterloo Public Health updated the guidance and protocols involving school attendance for siblings of ill students.

PREVIOUSLY – any school-attending sibling(s) or parent(s) of ill students were required to “self-isolate” at home until their ill sibling / child had either received a negative COVID-19 test OR been cleared by a doctor to return to school — and were free of COVID-19 symptoms for 24 hours.

NOW — any school-attending sibling(s) or parent(s) of ill students are allowed to attend school so long as they are asymptomatic themselves and will rigorously “self-monitor” for the onset of COVID-19 symptoms. This means a sibling will NOT be sent home at the same time as a child who may not be feeling well. However, their ill sibling must still self-isolate until they have either received a negative COVID-19 test OR been cleared by a doctor to return to school – and are free of COVID-19 symptoms for 24 hours.

PLEASE NOTE — Symptomatic children or school staff who have a known exposure to a case of COVID-19 during their infectious period or have travelled in the past 14 days, (and their household contacts) must still self-isolate pending the test result of the symptomatic individual, and must not attend work or school until the symptomatic individual(s) receive a negative test.

We do want to continue maintaining safe and healthy learning environments for all our students, so we also encourage all families and individuals to use the Ontario government’s school screening tool, available at: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/school-screening/

The screening tool is also available on our WCDSB homepage at https://wcdsb.ca/

Please look for the yellow banner at the top of that page.

The next meeting of the Board of Trustees is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. — Monday, September 28, 2020 — at the Waterloo Region Catholic Education Centre.

Meeting Agenda

General Information About WCDSB Board Meetings

Information About the Board of Trustees

The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, representing more than 96,000 Catholic school supporters, operates 48 schools and five adult education facilities serving more than 40,000 elementary, secondary and continuing education students in Waterloo Region – continuing a 184-year tradition of quality, inclusive, faith-based education. Follow us on Twitter: @WCDSBNewswire – #WCDSBAwesome.

Dear Parents and Care Givers, 

I am writing to provide you with an update regarding remote learning at St. Isidore K-12 Catholic Virtual Schools. First, I would like to take a moment to thank you for your patience as we work through this unprecedented task of creating an entire school for over 3000 students in just a few short weeks. We know you are anxious to have your children begin their online learning classes, and we are very eager to meet your children and begin building relationships with them to create vibrant learning communities. There are several items I would like to provide updates for. I know you have many questions, so hopefully this will help to address some of them. 

The sheer size of the school has created unanticipated challenges and as such we have had to adjust our start dates – BOTH elementary and secondary students will begin their classes on September 17th. 

Early next week your child’s teacher will make contact to introduce him or herself and to make sure your child is ready to begin learning on the 17th. At this time, the teacher will provide you with details regarding the learning platform to be used (D2L or Google Classroom) and well as some details regarding the class schedule.

All students should be prepared to attend learning from 8:30 to 3:00.

However, please rest assured that they will not be sitting in front of a computer for the entire time – there will be body breaks and recess/ lunch breaks as well as times to work independently, to engage with their peers and to speak 1:1 with the teacher. We are planning to vary the teaching and learning activities and routines to help students engage in their learning and be active partners in creating the learning environment. 

If, in the Board Return to School Survey, you indicated that your family needed a Chromebook, your home school will be in contact with you to arrange for you to borrow one from the school. Please watch for messages from the school regarding this process. Since the survey closed, you may have identified that you will need more support. Please contact your home school Administration as they will help arrange this for you.  

You may have seen in the news that the WCDSB is providing Elementary Student Learning Kits to all students in K-8. IF you would like one, please contact your home school to arrange to pick one up, as they were all delivered there.  

Finally, on behalf of our staff, we would like to continue to welcome you and your children to St. Isidore.  We are so excited to begin this journey together. There have been bumps in the road as we get things up and running, and I am sure there will be others along the way, but I believe that when we work together, when we support each other and keep your children’s education and wellness at our guide, that we can do great things together.   

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @IsidoreVirtual for up to date information. Our Web page will also be live soon! 

Peace and Blessings,  

Carla Santomero, Principal

Dawn Butson , Elementary Vice Principal

David Jaeger, Secondary Vice Principal   

The next meeting of the Board of Trustees is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. — Monday, September 14, 2020 — at the Waterloo Region Catholic Education Centre.

Meeting Agenda

General Information About WCDSB Board Meetings

Information About the Board of Trustees

The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, representing more than 96,000 Catholic school supporters, operates 48 schools and five adult education facilities serving more than 40,000 elementary, secondary and continuing education students in Waterloo Region – continuing a 184-year tradition of quality, inclusive, faith-based education. Follow us on Twitter: @WCDSBNewswire – #WCDSBAwesome.

Dear Parents and Caregivers:  

Welcome to St. Isidore K-12 Virtual Learning School. We are excited to work with you this year and are looking forward to many exciting learning opportunities.  Currently, we are reaching out to update you on our Elementary and Secondary Virtual Learning. We know there are many questions, and we will try to address some of them here. Our school website is currently under construction on the https://wcdsb.ca/site and will provide you with more information once complete.    

St. Isidore students will be assigned to a qualified WCDSB teacher and will be with other same grade children in a Virtual Learning classroom. This class will have its own digital learning platform (either D2L or Google Classroom) and instruction will occur online through asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities. The amount of time students will spend in Virtual Learning will be equal to the same amount of time as students who chose in-person learning (approximately 300 minutes/day). Students in both Elementary and Secondary will ‘attend’ school daily between 8:30 am and 3:00 pm. It is expected that students in the Virtual Learning Model participate every day; attendance will be monitored and recorded.  

Ontario curriculum will be taught, assessed and evaluated according to Ministry of Education Curriculum documents and following Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting in Ontario Schools. St. Isidore teachers will provide synchronous learning opportunities which will include a combination of whole class instruction, individual or small group support (video conferencing via Google Meet / Teams, phone calls, etc.), student presentations, mini-lessons and content/skill-based instruction, as appropriate.  

Children who have IEPs or are English Language Learners will continue to be supported and your child’s home school Special Education and ESL staff will work with St. Isidore staff to create or update IEPs and individualized learning plans for students requiring support. Guidance, and social work support will also be provided via your child’s home school.  

Over the next few days, we will continue to staff St. Isidore and create class lists. We have approximately 3100 students selecting the Virtual Learning option and as such this process takes time. During the week of September 8 – 11 teachers will be reaching out to the students in their classes to introduce themselves. Staff will seek to ensure that all students have the necessary technology to support the virtual learning and that they can access the Learning Platforms so that we can begin creating classroom communities. Classes for Elementary students will begin on September 14th, and our secondary students will begin classes on September 17th.   

Once again, we look forward to the opportunity to learn with your children, and we appreciate your patience as we work to ensure a strong start to the coming year.   

 Your Administration Team, 

Carla Santomero, Principal

Dawn Butson , Elementary Vice Principal

David Jaeger, Secondary Vice Principal   

Things will be looking a little different this year as we welcome our #WCDSBAwesome students back to school.

Here’s a special video to give students a sneak peak at some of the things they can expect.

To view our previous “Welcome Back” message for our #WCDSBAwesome staff – and Director of Education Loretta Notten’s personal video answering our most common back-to-school questions, please click HERE.

Dear Parents:

On July 31st we launched a survey asking parents to indicate to the school board your intentions for your child(ren) to return to school for face to face learning, or to opt to learn remotely instead.

In the busyness of summer, it is understandable that some families missed completing the survey. We have made every effort to advertise the survey and personally contact all our families from whom we did not have a response after the survey closed.

However, there are still some families for whom we do not yet know their intentions regarding whether their child will attend face to face or virtually in September.

Since the first day of school is rapidly approaching, if you have not yet indicated your intentions, we respectfully ask that you please contact your school by noon on Friday, September 4.

Contact information for our schools is available by clicking HERE.

If you do not contact your school by noon on Friday, we will assume that you have chosen for your child to attend school in person, and your child will not have access to our Virtual School, should you desire it, until after Thanksgiving.

Thank you so much for your cooperation in letting us know your intentions for your child(ren).

It’s back-to-school time, and we know that along with the usual excitement, this September brings with it some apprehension and more than a few questions from parents.

Last week we asked the WCDSB community to send us those questions.

Please click the link below and follow along as Director of Education Loretta Notten personally answers the most common questions we received.

Please visit the following link for a special message for WCDSB staff – from our Director of Education, Loretta Notten…