Marymount Academy will be hosting an OSAID (Ontario Students Against Impaired Driving) “Chain of Life” event on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m at Tom Davies Square.

The purpose of the event is to promote the awareness re the dangers of impaired driving to youth. Students from all four of the Board’s secondary schools, (St. Benedict CSS, Bishop Carter CSS, St. Charles College and Marymount Academy) will create a “human chain” by holding hands as a sign of solidarity againstt “drinking and driving.

The “Chain of Life” will begin at 11:30 a.m. in and around Tom Davies Square and will last for half an hour. The students will then move into Tom Davies Square for free pizza and entertainment by a variety of guests. A number of key speakers including, Mayor John Rodriguez, Police Chief Ian Davidson, OSAID Operations Manager, Matt Evans and other community representatives will address the students.

The event will terminate at 2:00 p.m. Transportation for the students to and from the event will be provided courtesy of the City of Greater Sudbury and its transit service.

Mr. Wilfred Cywink from the University of Western Ontario’s Indigenous Services Recruitment Office will be at St Benedict Catholic Secondary School on Friday, April 4 to interact with the school’s First Nations students.

Mr. Cywink will share with the students his personal educational experiences and encourage them to stay in school and strive for a post secondary school education be it college or university.

Mr Cywink is also coming to the City of Greater Sudbury to participate in the Northern Aboriginal Festival at the Sudbury Arena on April 5 and 6, 2008.

St. Christopher Catholic School will be hosting its first ESSO Family Math Night on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m at the school, 2843 CKSO Road. There will be two math programs provided during the evening; one for students in JK, SK, and Grade 1 and another for students in Grades 2 to 6.

ESSO Family Math Night is an initiative operating out of the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario. Its goal is to assist parents and families who would like to help their children experience success in math.

Family Math sessions educate parents to work with their children in order to develop positive attitudes towards mathematics. Parents and children attend the Family Math Night together and are both actively involved in doing mathematics. Teachers facilitate the sessions, introducing the games and activities and provide assistance with the completion of the tasks. Family Math Night is designed to reinforce math concepts while fostering an enjoyment of mathematics in a non-threatening and entertaining environment.

Sudbury Catholic Schools Director of Education, Catherine McCullough and Board Vice-chair Paula Peroni will be in attendance.

The Greater Sudbury Public Library will be presenting free Movie Matinees for Seniors and other adults. Each month one movie will be shown in English and one in French, at the Main Library, 74 MacKenzie Street at 1:00 p.m. on the following days:

Thursday, January 10, 2008: Away From Her: Drama. 110 minutes. Married for 50 years, Grant and Fiona’s life together is full of tenderness and humour, complicated now by Fiona’s memory loss. Moving Fiona into a nursing home specializing in Alzheimer’s disease, Grant embarks on the greatest act of self-sacrifice of his life.

Thursday, January 24, 2008: La Vie secrète des gens heureux. (French.) Drama. 141 minutes. The Dufresne family is the perfect family. However, when their son Thomas falls in love with Audrey, their entire family life is shattered and the romantic comedy they were living slowly slides toward tragedy… a beautiful and cruel tragedy.

Thursday, February 14, 2008: The Painted Veil. Drama. 124 minutes. The Painted Veil is a love story in the 1920’s that tells the story of a young English couple. Walter, a doctor, and Kitty, an upper-class woman, get married for all the wrong reasons and relocate to Shanghai, where she falls in love with someone else.

Thursday, February 28, 2008: La Neuvaine (French) Drama. 137 minutes. Seriously traumatized by a tragic event, Jeanne, an emergency room doctor, leaves her home in Montreal and finds herself on the dock in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. As she prepares to commit suicide, a young man shows up, and after talking her out of her desperate act, decides that he needs to watch over her.

Thursday, March 13, 2008: Secrets and Lies. Drama. 142 minutes. A family is forced to confront the personal issues they’ve been avoiding for years when Cynthia, a working-class Englishwoman, receives a phone call from a woman who claims to be the daughter she put up for adoption years ago.

Thursday, March 27, 2008: La Tourneuse de pages. (French) Drama. 142 minutes. Melanie, a young working-class girl with a passion for the piano has an important audition. During the audition, one of the judges, an internationally-acclaimed pianist, disrupts the audition to give an autograph, disturbing Melanie’s concentration. As a result, Melanie gives up the piano. Ten years later, Melanie is 20 years old and forms a relationship with the same woman.

The movies are free and everyone is welcome. Please call Lise Larose at 673-1155, extension 225 for more information or e-mail lise.larose@greatersudbury.ca

Join us at the Main Public Library, 74 Mackenzie Street for two great seasonal movies.

Thursday, December 6th watch The Bishop’s Wife, a romantic comedy starring Cary Grant and Loretta Young. This wonderful film, nominated for five Academy Awards in 1947 gives us Cary Grant as an angel come to earth to help a bishop save his marriage. The movie will be shown in English, without sub-titles.

And then on Thursday, December 13, drop in to see the wonderful Canadian film, Mon Oncle Antoine. This movie was filmed in 1971 and tells the story of a small mining town in Quebec. It is Christmas Eve, and this is the only day of the year when the factories close and the inhabitants can celebrate. The film will be shown in French, without sub-titles.

Everyone is welcome to both showings and admission is free!

For more information, please call Lise Larose at 673-1155, extension 225.

Sudbury Catholic District School Board has hired Laura Kuzenko as its newest principal in charge of the Ministry of Education’s Schools Effectiveness Framework – (a Ministry directed initiative designed specifically for the purpose of improving student achievement).

Kuzenko is a former principal of the Sudbury Catholic District School Board having served in that position at both St. John and St. Theresa Catholic Schools before leaving to become Science North’s Director of Education. Kuzenko’s zeal and enthusiasm coupled with her commitment to bringing about increased effectiveness and improved student achievement in both the public and private sector make her an ideal candidate for the job.

In May 2007, the Ministry of Education established a working group representing supervisory officers, principals, federations and diagnosticians to develop an effective school framework which would be used in school boards across Ontario. The key purposes of the School Effectiveness Framework are to;

■ ensure specificity and intent in instruction that responds to student learning needs
■ build board and school capacity in diagnosing strengths and areas which require attention
■ foster introspection, reflection and analysis
■ act as a catalyst for student improvement from within
■ implement high-yield research based strategies
■ provide a forum for consensus building around school improvement
■ communicate, celebrate and build public confidence around school effectiveness
■ assist in planning district strategies as a response to needs identified in school evaluations

Director of Education for the Sudbury Catholic School Board, Catherine McCullough welcomes the Ministry of Education’s initiative to support boards in working with their schools to identify strengths and to target areas of improvement. “The School Effectiveness Framework headed by Laura Kuzenko will implement strategies which will continue to improve student achievement at our Board,” stated McCullough. “We will also be able to equip those who work in our schools with the diagnostic skills they need to bring about or sustain improvement.”

The 2005/2006 SCDSB Director’s Report is now available at http://www.scdsb.edu.on.ca/admin/reports/SCDSBDirectorsReport.pdf. The report celebrates what SCDSB Chair Paula Peroni calls “another tremendous year for the Sudbury Catholic District School Board”.