Marian Central Friday Focus

After an unconventional start to the second semester with holidays, snow days, ice days and cold days, we have settled into a nice routine here at Marian Central heading into February.

Thank you to all the parents, students and the whole Marian Central community for a wonderful Catholic Schools Week. The faculty and staff greatly enjoyed the kind gestures, lunches and treats throughout the week. Students had a fun and respectful time with their themed dress down days. Father Warren and our area Priests and Deacons did an amazing job at our all-county Mass on Thursday with all of our deanery K-8 schools. It is a beautiful sight to have our entire school along with our area schools at this event. Incredible way to culminate a great Catholic Schools Week—thank you to all involved!

Looking ahead, we are near our state competitions for boys and girls basketball, wrestling and fencing. Good luck to all of our athletes in the days and weeks ahead. I want to give specific recognition to our girls basketball team who is competing in the Chicago Christian Conference Tournament Championship versus Bishop McNamara on Saturday. Good luck to the ladies on the team, Coach Bordeaux and Coach Brown! Along those same lines, we had two monumental achievements in basketball this past week: Madison Kenyon crossed the 1,000 point threshold in girls basketball, and Christian Bentancur surpassed Adam Pischke's all-time school scoring record, and is less than 100 points away from crossing the 2,000 point threshold in boys basketball. Amazing accomplishments that are well deserved and certainly well earned by not only two great athletes, but two individuals who do an excellent job of representing the Marian community. Congratulations Madison and Christian!

Lastly, I want to offer words of encouragement for our students as we near the midway point of the third academic quarter. The beginning of semester two is a fresh start as grades reset and in some cases, there is an entirely new class. With that, please take a moment to reflect on how the semester has gone so far. If things are going well, great—keep it up! If things are not going as well as you hope or expected, take time to consider why and formulate a course of action moving forward. As I said, the new semester is a fresh start and in my opinion it is important to find momentum early.

Thank you once more to everyone who helped with Catholic Schools Week in 2024. It means a lot to all of our faculty, staff and students that we are part of a community that comes together in times such as these to celebrate our calling and our faith.

Brad Williams

Course selections for the 24-25 school year should be made by our current students between February 5 - February 23 on PlusPortals. All of the information you and your student will need to navigate the online process and to make the best course selections is available on our website at: https://www.marian.com/academics/curriculum-guide/.

Parents, it is critical that you play an active role in this process by discussing and reviewing your student's course selections. It will be helpful to have your student fill out the grade-specific Course Selection Worksheet before they select their courses online. The counselors are available for you and your students to assist in this process, as needed. Please contact Mrs. Hilton (khilton@marian.com) for current freshmen and juniors and Mr. Kruse (tkruse@marian.com) for current sophomores and seniors.

Online Course Registration Timeline:

Week of 1/29

Mrs. Hilton, Mr. Kruse and the mentors reviewed the course selection and online course registration process with current students during Advisory

2/5-2/23

Online course registration in PlusPortals

3/6

Course Selection Verification Forms mailed - if a student wishes to adjust his/her course selections after this mailing, they should bring in that form with the change indicated and signed by his/her parent

3/22:

Course Recommendation Forms due - for students who were not initially recommended for a course OR for students who did not meet the prerequisites for a course

Last day to change courses

Deadline to pay Advanced Placement (AP) course fees

It’s time to make your 2024-2025 Registration Fee payment.

The non-refundable registration fee is $300. However, if you submit payment before February 15, 2024, you receive a $75 discount making the amount due $225. Payment can be made by clicking here (a 4% fee will be applied) or by sending to the office. All returning students will register for courses online. Please click the link below to view the tuition rates for 2024-25.

Marian Central is proud to host a Blood Drive on Friday February 23rd from 9:00 am to 1:30 pm in Landers Pavilion. Any Marian Central Catholic student who is at least 16 or older is encouraged to participate. We would also like to encourage all teachers, parents and members of our Marian community to participate as well.

It is super easy to donate blood. Donors are asked to get plenty of sleep the night before, then eat something and drink plenty of water before coming to donate. After your donation is complete, there will even be time for you to relax in the gym while enjoying some free snacks!

We also wanted to share a couple of important facts with everyone about the need of donating blood:

• 4.5 million: the number of American lives saved each year by blood transfusions.
• 43,000 pints: the amount of donated blood used each day in the United States
• Someone needs blood every two seconds.
• Approximated 25% of the blood collected in drives is donated by college and high school students.
• Blood cannot be manufactured in a laboratory.
• The number one reason blood donors say they give is because they “want to help others.”

Details

To sign up to donate, please scan the QR code on the fliers that are posted around school or click here to complete the registration form. You will be asked to select a time, so make sure you schedule it during the class period you are ok missing, and you will enter your name, date of birth, and a contact phone number and email. Please use a non-Marian Central email so you can receive a reminder.

Any Marian Central Catholic student who wishes to donate will be required to have a signed Parent Consent Form to be allowed to donate. If you have any questions, please contact Mr. Winkelman in the main office.

We invite you to watch the video about donating blood (linked below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oaN38H_G6c&feature=youtu.be.

Friday 2/9: Winona State University-10th Period

It's time to dust off your boots, break out your bling!

Join us for Marian Central's premier fundraising event, where you will enjoy a western-themed night complete with dinner, drinks, live music, casino games and live & silent auctions. For more information and to purchase tickets/sponsor the event, visit marianauction.givesmart.com.

Class Auction Baskets - Donations Needed

For Marian Central's Gala we are asking you to consider supporting our event, as each class is creating two themed baskets for the silent auction.

Freshmen: Click here to view and sign up for requested items.

Sophomores: Click here to view and sign up for requested items.

Juniors: Click here to view and sign up for requested items.

Seniors: Click here to view and sign up for requested items.

Every year, Marian Central Catholic High School serves as a test center for the ACT in April. This year, the test date will be Saturday, April 13th, 2024. Also know that while we serve as a test center, we are not able to reserve seats for our Marian Central Catholic students. If you are interested in signing up for the April 13th ACT (or the February 10th, June 8th or July 13th at other locations), please register on the ACT Registration website. For the April 13th test here, be sure to use our test center code: 174990.

We will be providing a free practice ACT here at Marian Central Catholic on Wednesday, March 6th after school from 3:00pm - 7:00pm in the library. Space is limited to the first 30 students who sign up. Students can sign up the Practice ACT through the Revolution Prep website. The Revolution Prep website will have links to additional free practice tests as well as some group test prep sessions, which come with a fee.