AN IB WORLD SCHOOL

Community News

The senior tradition of dressing up in costumes for their final photos continued after an early fall snowstorm.  See a Photo Gallery of their creative outfits, including the full cast of the classic TV cartoon "Scooby Do, Where Are You?"  Go Class of 2021!

The Saint George’s School Blood Drive is Friday, November 6th from 11am to 5pm at Vitalant’s Donation Center located at 201 W Cataldo Ave.  It will not be held at school due to COVID-19.  You can click here to Register to Donate.  If your child (who is 16 or 17) is interested in donating as well, you will need to fill out their Donor Consent Form and bring a printed copy with you.  Please make sure you and/or your child is eligible to donate by reviewing the Donor Eligibility Page.  Masks and social distancing are required at the donation center.  (Fill out this Fast Track Form before you arrive and you won't have to spend as much time in the donation center.)  Please bring a photo ID (such as a driver’s license) with you when you come to donate.  There is currently a huge shortage of blood, so it is more important now than ever to donate!

2nd Harvest Food Drive Begins

November 02, 2020

The SGS annual 2nd Harvest Food Drive begins November 2nd and runs through Friday the 20th.  This year grades 6-12 each having their own donation boxes with a competition between grades.  The Lower School will be collecting as one unit, so LS families can drop off donations outside ESAC every Tuesday and Wednesday from 8:00-8:15am as you drive up for morning student drop off.  Everyone else can bring donations into the MS and US boxes in the courtyards.  All food donated will go directly to families in Spokane that are unable to afford food.  In Spokane alone, 1 in 8 people including 1 in 5 children are food insecure.  Saint George’s food drive is the biggest donation that 2nd Harvest gets from any organization!  For families that are choosing to social distance, you can always donate directly to 2nd Harvest at: https://2-harvest.org.  Every $1 donated equals 5 meals.  

Things that can be donated include any canned goods as well as packaged nonperishable food items.  Things that are most needed include:
- Canned Fish, and Lean Meats
- Healthy soups and Stews
- Dry or Canned Beans
- Whole Grain Pastas, Rice, and Cereal
- Canned fruits and Veggies
- Peanut Butter and other Nut Butters

The Lower School students who were on campus dressed up in their costumes the day before Halloween and danced to the song Ghost-Busters on the playground.  See a Photo Gallery of the variety of strange creatures and superheroes, as well as a Photo Gallery of the Kindergarten classroom costumes.  The Middle School also had it's share of strange outfits -- see a Photo Gallery from the 7th grade science class and the MS hallways.  

School photo days are Tuesday and Thursday, Oct. 27 & 29.  Photo order forms were mailed home last week with instructions.  It is important for each student to bring their order form, even if you don’t plan on ordering pictures, since the personalized barcode on the form speeds up the process.  All students will have their pictures taken, regardless of whether they order or not, to be used in our yearbook and our internal database.

Classic Image Photography also will be on campus from 3:30-4:30pm on both days for those who are able to bring their distance learning student(s) to campus for photos.  With that limited amount of time after school, please contact Michelle Bledsoe via email or phone (509-464-8742) to let her know what day and approximately what time you plan to be here.  For those students who can’t make it onto campus, John Carter will reach out to parents to ask for a photo to submit for the yearbook. 

Look on the website Parent Portal for the SGS 2020-21 School Calendar updated 10-20-20.  The school made some revisions to reflect changes at the start of school as well as adding in quarter end dates and semester start dates for the Middle and Upper Schools.  All major dates have remained the same.  Please use this calendar going forward for the rest of the school year. 

We would like to thank our parents, teachers, students, and staff for partnering through these tough times.  Some of the fears we had going into in-person learning have turned out to be non-issues.  Our youngest learners are wearing masks and keeping their social distance, when many thought it couldn’t happen.  Our teachers and staff have been able to pivot on a dime when they have been asked to change details to reduce risk.  

We appreciate our parents working with the school and being forthright with any symptoms your students might have.  While many of those symptoms would have been excused in the past to a common cold, allergies, or even a fever brought on by breaking in a new tooth, we now must mitigate those risks by staying home and communicating with the school.   Students and staff must also stay home if they were in close contact with a COVID positive patient.  It is important to let the school know when your student will be absent for any reason.  You can alert your division assistants, Paige, Michelle, and Melanie by email or a phone call.  We would also ask you to copy Ryan Peplinski at ryan.peplinski@sgs.orgIt is our charge to make sure you have the best information about when to return to school based on the Spokane Regional Health District and the Department of Health guidelines.  

The Department of Health has released a new Symptom Management Flowchart to help clarify what to do if you or your students have symptoms.  The Spokane Regional Health District is in the process of updating their school forms, then we will follow suit and will post those links on the SGS website.  The symptom flowchart will be posted on the SGS COVID page as well.  (FYI – The first page is to be used when the community case rate is in the moderate-high range like now.  The second page is to be used after it drops into the low range.)  

Sincerely,

Ryan Peplinski
SGS Covid Coordinator

The CDC recommendation on carpools says, “we recommend avoiding pooled rides where multiple passengers are not in the same household.”  However, if that is not possible, the CDC recommended the following steps “to prevent getting and spreading COVID-19”:
• Stay home if you are sick or had close contact with someone who has the coronavirus.
• Everyone in the car must wear a mask.
• Everyone in the car must wash or sanitize their hands.
• Keep the car windows lowered to increase ventilation inside the car and run the car’s ventilation system on non-recirculation mode.
 
If you do need to carpool, we ask that you provide the school with the details of who is riding in the car daily.  We need to know the driver and student names for contract tracing should anyone test positive for COVID or be considered a close contact.  This will help the school and Spokane Regional Health District determine which students, teachers, and parents to quarantine if needed.  Please provide carpool information to ryan.peplinski@sgs.org.  
 
An article on Cars.com had these helpful suggestions:  “When considering a carpool with someone outside of your family, make sure that the bonus child is already in your child’s classroom cohort or pod, which is the subset of students who will be together in a hybrid class setting. It’s all about limiting who’s in your family’s pandemic bubble.
 
“When it comes to social distancing, things get tougher in a car. If you have a three-row SUV or minivan, you could put one child in the third row and the other child in the second row, but if your car is loaded with your own kids already, you should probably skip adding someone from outside of your family to your car to limit everyone’s risks.”

SGS alumna Lauren Meyer '08, who lives and works in South Australia, was recently awarded the South Australia Young Achiever Award In STEM sciences.  Lauren investigated the impacts of wildlife tourism for her PhD in biochemical ecology at Flinders University, particularly the effects of cage diving on white sharks.  Her work contributed to the implementation of new regulations and new tourism assessment frameworks used by the Department of Environment and Water.  She is also the co-founder of Otlet Research, a tissue sharing platform for researchers around the world.  Her dad David adds, "Thank you to SGS and it’s wonderful staff and teachers who inspired her."  See a short Facebook Video about Lauren's work from the South Australia Young Achiever's page.

Congratulations to Lower School parent Vange Ocasio Hochheimer, one of the Inland Northwest Women of the Year!  Growing up in Puerto Rico and New York City, she used the poverty she saw around her as inspiration to earn degrees in economics.  In both her community service and academic research, the question that drives her is, “How can the economy develop successfully while at the same time preserving the well-being and dignity of people and the environment?”  Read an extended profile of Hochheimer, now a Whitworth economics professor, in this recent Spokesman-Review Article.


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