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Message to families from Chair Petrella

My friends,

As we come to the end of the second week of the new school year, I wanted to take this opportunity to reach out and connect with all of you. 

Through my visits and conversations this week, I cannot help but recognize the strength and resiliency of our students, parents, and staff in our Catholic system. I personally witnessed our students reconnecting with their friends and being excited to begin a new year of learning. As a Board, we are humbled by the dedication of all our staff who remained steadfast in ensuring that we are always creating the best learning environments for our students. We will continue to provide our enhanced COVID-19 measures as long as required, to ensure our children have the safest environment possible. 

As a Catholic community, we remained strong, and together we will continue to create an inclusive, safe, and supportive environment for all, in line with our Catholic faith. 

As the 2022-23 year progresses, families will witness further growth throughout our district. Our enrolment has seen an unprecedented increase, with more and more students and families each day joining our Board who are seeking the gift of Catholic education for their children. 

As a result of this ongoing growth, the Board is continually reinvesting in our system and enabling staff to focus on additional support for students, and new and innovative programming. We also, as a Board, are beginning the journey of building a new Catholic secondary school in the north end of Brantford and a new Catholic elementary school in Caledonia.

Both schools will be constructed with the environment and state-of-the-art classrooms in mind, and our secondary school will have a strong focus on the skilled trades, a child care centre offering 128 spaces, and a first-class sports field. I am also excited by the investment we have planned for Assumption College, where the Board has committed a significant amount of funding for a sports field revitalization project.

I am so pleased to report to you all the great things we are doing in our system, and the strong financial position we are in as a Board. It is this, along with the Board's commitment to putting students first, which allows us to be true leaders in the province.

Together with families, we are supporting students to help them become innovative, conscientious, Catholic leaders of tomorrow.

We wish your family an exciting and successful school year, and as always, please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any comments or concerns that I can assist with.

Thank you and God bless,

Rick Petrella
rpetrella@bhncdsb.ca