News and Announcements

In a year of extraordinary challenges for students, teachers, and parents, many schools chose not to participate in the annual academic challenge. Chapel not only participated but placed in both team events. The Chapel team, led by Captains Reese and Renae Salonga, placed 2nd in Logic and 3rd in the Super Quiz event. Aaron Kim took 2nd place honors in the individual math competition. When all the scores were tallied, Cathedral Chapel School placed 3rd overall. We could not be prouder of our students or more thankful for the parents who supported the team during months of hard work and practice. None of this would have been possible without the hard work and leadership of one incredible coach: Mr. Roman del Pozo. God bless him, the team, and our entire Chapel family!

Cathedral Chapel students and teachers suspended their normal schoolday schedule on Thursday and joined a Mars Landing Zoom Watch Party instead. Students were able to witness and discuss history in real time as Perseverance approached and then successfully touched down on the red planet. It was an incredible afternoon of learning filled with suspense and wonder. Students cheered as the mask-wearing engineers and incredibly diverse team celebrated their years of hard work and sacrifice. We are blessed at CCS to be able to share such important events as a Christian family of life-long learners.

We are excited to invite you to our virtual Open House, hosted by the CCS Student Council, from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM.  Meet the administration, faculty and staff. Please click on the link in our calendar to access the webinar.  The password is CCS.

Chapel's amazing student council, under the able leadership of Mr. Roman del Pozo, held a very successful drive-thru, food drive on Saturday, November 20th. Thanks to the generosity of our school families, on Monday Blessed Sacrament Food Pantry will be receiving 839 cans of food (soups, stews, fruits, meats, tuna, veggies, and more). Without a doubt this was a team effort. Student council members planned the event and announced the drive in each Zoom classroom; Mr. Ponce prepared all the boxes; Miss Kipp texted updates to inspire donations, and Mr. del Pozo, assisted by his amazing wife Iris and incredible daughters Jordan, Reagan, and Kennedy, manned the drive from 9:00 to 12:00. Mr. Ponce is coming in on his vacation to make the delivery to the food pantry. A special thank-you goes out to all who participated in this worthwhile project but especially to the Castaneda, Norword, and Reyes families for their extraordinary generosity. God bless CCS, and Happy Thanksgiving from Cathedral Chapel School.

On Thursday evening, August 13th, Back to School Night was for the first time ever Zoomed into our parents' homes. Teachers have been preparing their Google Classrooms and becoming familiar with the new resources so that next Wednesday we can WOW our students with exciting lessons. We are praying our hearts out that we can safely return to in person learning sooner rather than later. In the meantime, Chapel is commited to delivering the best online education possible. Book pick up is set for Monday, August 17th, and students are already posting summer reading presentations. We appreciate our parents and students and look forward to a year of effective, exciting, estraordinary learning. .God bless CCS!

Chapel's Covid-19 Response Task Force has been working all summer to plan for safe, effective, robust distance learning with the ultimate goal of safely reopening the school as soon as possible in accordance with State Department of Health guidelines. (Pray for 14-consecutive days of declining Covid-19 numbers.) In order to be ready for a safe reopening, we've designed a variety of flexible plans that can be adjusted to quickly respond to the course of the pandemic-keeping in mind that the safety of our CCS family comes first. Those plans include, but are not limited to, redesigning classroom configurations to allow for proper social distancing, purchasing face shields for every student, installing additional hand sanitizers throughout the facility, planning for temperature scanning and staggered drop offs and pickups, purchasing room sanitizers, as well as subscriptions to top-rated, student-friendly learning sites that will engage our students and ensure they meet Common Core Standards and our Schoolwide Student Learning Expectations.
We are adding Freckle and CatholicBrain to our repetoire of amazing resources. Junior high students will be using SadlierConnect for delivery of vocabulary lessons. Teachers have been attending workshops and seminars to hone their tech skills and enable them to provide our students with the best education possible, whether at a distance, in cohorts, or all in person. We pray for a return to normalcy, but in the interim, we are prepared to work with our families to provide the absolute best education possible. God Bless our incredible Chapel family!

In the words of Ms. Fontan following the unjust killing of George Floyd, "Our world is so broken and hurting. We need Jesus more than the air we breathe." Miss Kipp shared a beautiful prayer for peace at our weekly faculty meeting. The text is attached to this post. Chapel would like to share that prayer with our whole school family. Miss Elberg has created a moving tribute to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, three victims of senseless brutality. We acknowledge that all Black Lives Matter. We are proud to share her tribute on this site. We are outraged, saddened, confused, and shocked by the cruelty that led to the tragic death of Mr. Floyd and so many others. At Chapel we embrace our diversity and refuse to tolerate bigotry or racism. On the early nights of the protests, we watched as our city burned and our beloved firefighters at Station 61 fought the flames under dangerous circumstances. We know that one of our families experienced damage to their restaurant in The Grove. We know that the same LAPD officers that we honored in January were called up to respond to looting. Please join us in condemning injustice and racism. Please join us in supporting peaceful protests. Help us search for a way to defeat racism and ensure justice and equality for all. Stay safe and well.

Congratulations to 7th grader Cliff Connors for coming in first in English at the Los Angeles Academic Decathlon Finals and finishing with the highest score in the entire nation. Cliff took the top honors in the nation in English, and 8th grader Joaquin Recinos came in 2nd in the nation in his event, social studies. In addition to preparing for their events, these two, young men maintained "A" Honors in their regular subjects and became masters of logic. The diligence, teamwork, and effort they showed is a credit to them and their families. This is the first time in the school's long and envied history that members have earned national honors. Their coaches and the entire CCS family could not be prouder. We commend them for their success and thank them for their dedication.

Spirit Week is upon us, and it's a time for us to stop a moment and reflect on how far we've come and the amazing growth we're so privileged to witness at Chapel. As they say, "Time marches on," and hopefully we are moving forward with the parade. Although we try to hold on to our special memories, sometimes it feels as though, we blink and everything, everyone has changed. It seems like only yesterday that we welcomed the Class of 2020 to their kinder class. These pictures of some of our students through the years, remind us of our past and give us hope about tomorrow. God bless CCS!