Discover Catholic Schools Week with CPS Giveaways!
Giveaways, Giveaways, Giveaways!
There have been a lot of changes for everyone this year and we’re hoping to make a positive one in your inbox and on your social feeds. Catholic Purchasing Services has committed to building an online community where we share stories, connect through ideas and build a trusted group that also wants to have a little fun.
To kick things off, we want to say Thank You – for being here and taking part. CPS is celebrating Discover Catholic Schools Week with all of you, and we’re doing our best to help our schools feel inspired, decorated and outfitted so each kid can learn at their highest potential. During CSW (November 14-20, 2021), we’re hosting more than a handful of givewaways. Did someone say laptops and custom design consultations and chairs and whiteboards? We did, it’s us!
Enter the giveaway* here!
*Winners must be religious 501(c)3 organizations.
Check out our raffle prizes!
Giveaway Information
5 DAYS OF PRIZES! Why? Because why not! We’re talking a laptop a day (yes, you read that correctly!). We also have whiteboards and stools and cleaning starter kits amongst other items from our amazing partners. Simply enter your name by Friday, November 12th @9pm and we’ll announce winners on our social channels daily*. Yes, it is that simple and that exciting!
Just think of all the inspiration that might come out of a prize you might win.
*Winners must be religious 501(c)3 organizations. Winners will be notified via email.
2021 School Award Winners
High five!
We couldn’t be more proud of this past winter’s first-ever CPS Leadership Award winners. CPS developed these awards to “high-five” schools that have demonstrated strength and resilience during unprecendented times. We’re happy to give a collective congrats to our first round of winners and be on the lookout for next year’s application coming January 2022.
• St. Louis School
Austin, TX
• St. Therese School
Albuquerque, NM
WE ARE HN – We Are In This Together
Holy Name High School is located in Parma Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. The co-educational, college preparatory school, which serves students in grades 9-12, opened in 1914. Today, Holy Name is proud to have 569 students from 68 different grade schools who travel from all over northeastern Ohio to receive a ‘Triple Threat’ Catholic education – one that develops their minds, bodies, and spirits.
Academically, more than a third of the student body is enrolled in at least one College Credit Plus or Advanced Placement course, allowing them to potentially earn more than 50 semester hours of college credit without ever leaving Holy Name’s campus. Ultimately, ninety-nine percent of Holy Name’s students go on to pursue a college degree.
Athletically, the Green Wave football and boys basketball teams recently went deep into the state playoffs. Rainbow Six Siege, a part of the relatively new Esports program, has won four national High School Esports League titles.
Most importantly, spiritual growth and faith-based opportunities remain a priority. Class-level retreats, morning rosaries, evening prayer, and service projects are woven into student life, giving everyone the opportunity to strengthen their relationship with the Lord.
All of these things – classes, athletics, after-school activities, community service – look very different this year. However, Holy Name has been proud to offer in-person learning, five days a week since the beginning of the school year, to all students who wish to attend during this COVID-19 pandemic. While about 85 percent of the student body has remained on campus, 15 percent continue to learn from home as synchronous e-learners.
To help everyone in the building stay as safe as possible, Holy Name launched the ‘WE ARE HN’ campaign in August. Each letter in WE ARE HN serves as a different reminder on what members of the community can do to protect themselves and others from the virus (The document is attached, and here is a link to the video - https://fb.watch/30o52LlT4X/).
As added precautions, plexiglass dividers have been installed in the library, labs, and the cafeteria, while in other classrooms students are distanced from one another. Stairwells have been designated as up or down only. The maintenance staff continues to disinfect high touch surfaces, such as handrails and bathrooms, several times a day. Students wipe down desk surfaces at the start of every class period.
Aside from changes in the classroom, Holy Name tweaked various fall semester events so students could still experience them as a community. Rather than celebrating Mass as an entire school, each grade level celebrated Mass separately in September. In October – during the month of the Holy Rosary – students gathered outside on the football field to pray together. A loud speaker and microphone helped students project the prayer to all. That same month, an indoors Homecoming ‘parade’ (thunderstorms scratched our outdoor plans!) allowed Holy Name to honor the 2020 Homecoming Court and the senior fall athletes.
November brought a virtual Fall Play that students performed via a Zoom recording for an audience to watch, Veterans Day Prayer Services celebrated in small groups throughout the day, and a life-giving Red Cross Blood Drive. Then, at Christmastime, the choir, jazz and symphonic bands recorded a holiday concert that was sent to current families and donors. Throughout it all, athletic contests plus extra-curricular activities such as Model U.N. and Marching Band continued, with students and staff appropriately masking and distancing as much as possible.
Holy Name is blessed with a devoted administration, faculty and staff that is keeping safety a priority, while also providing educational and spiritual opportunities that remind students that WE ARE HN… and we are in this together.
Curating a Classroom Environment for Better Engagement and Flexibility
Joan Sullivan is a visionary around crafting the best environment to influence young learners. Her journey started a few years back in Edison, New Jersey, where the knowledge that brighter lights, bolder colors, and modern, adaptable classroom furnishings produced a positive impact on not only students, but teachers and parents as well.
Joan is now the Principal at Immaculate Conception School (K-8) in Newburyport, MA. She and her team are working to pivot classrooms into flexible spaces for both remote and in-person learning. Despite the challenges brought on by COVID-19, Joan’s 2019 investment in modern furnishings and integrated technology has allowed the school to seamlessly move to socially-spaced classrooms, while retaining the collaborative feel that is so critical to young students.
For Joan, in 2019, the move to modernize started with the conviction that the “built” environment can significantly impact a student’s ability to learn, focus, collaborate, and retain information. This passionate belief led her team to seek out the resources of a major furniture manufacturer, KI, who is a strategic partner with Catholic Purchasing. KI was instrumental in helping Immaculate Conception brainstorm and re-design several learning spaces. Using CAD drawings, classroom data, color analysis, and furniture samples to test the ergonomics, durability, and functionality of individual desks, tables, and chairs, Joan’s team was able to create her ideal classroom. To take the project to a larger scale, the issue was funding. Joan used the prototype classroom to sell her vision to parents, alumni, and donors. Another critical option that allowed Joan to scale the project across multiple classrooms, impacting a larger number of students, was her choice to lease the furniture initially. Through fundraising, grants, and marketing the results of her vision and research - i.e. happy, engaged students - Joan eventually received a generous donation, allowing the school to purchase the furnishings outright.
The students, teachers, and staff at Immaculate Conception love the new furniture because of the flexibility, colors, and comfort. With COVID, Joan’s plan to expand the new environments to the lower grades has been delayed. Instead, the team has become very resourceful in transforming the existing products and furniture to create safe, socially distanced classrooms across different parts of the building, such as the gymnasium. Although it’s not the ideal Joan envisioned, it has been an easier transition with less disruption to students, while maximizing collaboration.
Exceptional Kids, Limitless Potential is a mindset at Immaculate Conception. Exceptional starts with strong leaders, like Joan, who possess limitless creativity in the passionate pursuit of helping young learners achieve more within a framework of a strong curriculum and a supportive and modern environment. Catholic Purchasing is a long-standing supplier to Immaculate Conception, and proud to be supporting visionary leaders, like Joan, in Catholic Schools across the United States.
More About Immaculate Conception
The Immaculate Conception School (IC) embraces a changing world in which the demand for a strong academic education is greater than ever. Our vision for the future is one that readily acknowledges the emerging array of skills and experiences that students will need to thrive in this new world. With an eye to the future, we also continue to adhere to the original mission of our school: to communicate Catholic Christian values, provide a quality academic program, and develop an awareness, empathy, and respect for the needs of all people.
Newton, MA: Catholic Purchasing, as part of its initial Catholic Schools Week Celebration program, announces their first ever Catholic Purchasing Services (CPS) Leadership Awards of $500 each, $2000 total, given to four (4) well deserving Catholic schools in the United States.
The Catholic Schools Week celebration program includes the announcement of our first-ever CPS Leadership Award winners. This award was developed to acknowledge schools who have demonstrated strength, resilience, and true leadership over the past year during which our education system has faced unprecedented challenges.
Designed to be an ongoing award/grant program to which schools can apply for support consideration, we are proud to make the following announcement:
2021 CPS Leadership Award recipients are:
- Holy Name High School – Parma Heights, OH – President, Shelbrey Blanc
- Immaculate Conception School – Newburyport, MA – Principal, Joan Sullivan
- St. Louis School – Austin, TX – Principal, Cindy Gee
- St. Therese School – Albuquerque, NM – Principal, Donna Illerbrun
The 2021 CPS School Leadership awards come in the form of a check in the amount of $500 and given to the above four (4) outstanding Catholic schools chosen from across the United States.
About Catholic Purchasing Services:
Catholic Purchasing, a 501(c)3 non-profit of the Catholic Church, is the #1 go-to resource on the web for all the products and services necessary to successfully run School, Church, Office and Community organizations.
- Through the combined purchasing power of over 40,000 religious non-profits, CPS offers the most competitive pricing and programming in the industry.
- With one-stop shopping, CPS delivers a hassle-free experience saving time, energy and the trouble of managing multiple suppliers and websites.
- Favorable credit terms provide organizations more flexibility in cash flow planning and utilization.
- Leveraging strong national and regional partnerships, CPS offers the widest assortment of products and services from world class suppliers including Staples, Cintas, Sherwin Williams, Xerox, Slabbinck, Demetz, KI, NPS, Virco, among others.
- Our friendly and experienced team offer expertise across all products and services and is ready to consult on projects large and small.
Visit www.catholicpurchasing.org for more information.
Our Praises to You
Part of Discover CSW is giving a big ol “THANK YOU” to those that go above and beyond. From students who help one another without being asked to teachers who make learning fun (every day) to the admin staff that is always wearing a smile. We see you and we appreciate you and your amazing-ness! Please read our thank you letter from our own President to each and every school!
A Message of Appreciation to Our Community
Now that the busy Back-to-School season is behind us, I’d like to take this opportunity to express to our PK-12 customers a sincere thank you from Catholic Purchasing Services. It has been an extremely challenging 18+ months for all of us, but especially so for our school customers. We appreciate your support and patience as we’ve worked through the complex supply chain issues that have plagued our community from the start of the pandemic. It’s been a struggle to pivot to new product categories like PPE and Electro-Static Sprayers, and to price product categories like Furniture, with raw materials fluctuating almost daily in availability and price, and then to deliver orders efficiently, in a time of unprecedented labor shortages and transportation backlogs. We are extremely fortunate to work with a network of world-class suppliers, who have been terrific partners in providing transparency and communication in an effort to help us serve you better.
We are MOST grateful for the opportunity to work with each of our school customers and hope that, despite all the inventory and shipping issues, Catholic Purchasing has provided you with prompt service, professional communication, and consistent product and price selection. Whether you purchase on the CPS website, or through our Sales and Service team, our commitment is to provide you with purchasing options and efficiencies, along with product knowledge and expertise. Our mission is to offer a wide selection of quality products, low everyday pricing, and superior customer service. We always welcome your feedback and encourage you to reach out to any of us directly with comments. In fact, in the next few months, we will be offering a brief survey to each of you to tell us how we are doing and where we can improve. Again, thank you for your business. We hope that you will continue to reach out for assistance with your procurement needs.
-Joseph Morrissey, President Catholic Purchasing Services
Let's Inspire Together
Have you ever had an idea, but didn’t know how to bring it to life? Us too. That’s why we’re building this community – so together we can make these amazing ideas a reality. From sleek science labs to creative-inspired art rooms to open-concept cafeterias that are perfect for a mid-day break. Take a peek at our helpful CPS products to design collaborative and creative spaces to transform from the expected to the inspired.
We also want to highlight some extra creative schools that we’ll dig deeper into later this winter!
Thank You To Our Sponsors
Catholic Purchasing Services, 580 Washington St, Newton, MA, 02458