Blue Ribbon!!!!

It was announced today that our school has been awarded a national Dept. of Education Blue Ribbon!!

There are about 30,000 non-public schools in the US and no more than 50 awards are given each year (they also recognize 200 of the 95,000 public schools). A school must have test scores in the top 10% of the country and meet a number of other criteria just to be invited to apply and then within that, a school can only be invited to apply once every 5 years.

We were told just 5 days ago (the third day of school - like we weren't already swamped!) that we are among the 2008 winners. Six public schools and 2 non-public schools in Maryland are being honored and we are the only one from both our county (public or non-public) as well as the Archdiocese of Washington so it's a great award. So today we had a huge announcement celebration.

All of the kids had to come in at 7:15am because the Archbishop was only available at 7:30am. Naturally we couldn't tell the parents or kids why so speculation has been running wild all weekend. (Some kids were saying the Jonas Brothers were coming so there may have been some letdown!)

We decked the school out with blue and white balloons and had blue hairbows for all the girls. The kids got blueberry muffins for breakfast, a special pizza lunch and then blue cupcakes at the end of the day. Laura Bush sent a congratulatory letter and will visit sometime later in the year (we weren't given enough notice to get the necessary clearance for her to be there today) and we'll be getting new banners with the Blue Ribbon logo.

So yesterday was a frantic day (and I had the stomach flu - came home and got sick as a dog but was better this morning) but it was so well worth it!

Brenna sings with the Children's Choir

Molly in her class procession