Good day, SJA families!
August 2022
We hope this finds you doing well as we wrap up the first few weeks of a successful start to the school year. It has been wonderful having all our students back on campus and there is much to celebrate and be grateful for at St. Joseph Academy. After two years of COVID-19 deeply affecting our school operations, we feel like we have put that in the rear view after successfully navigating the global pandemic and providing your child with an exceptional Marist, Catholic education. The school has doubled down on its efforts to ensure St. Joe is a safe and secure environment where your student can flourish, with the addition of armed security guards, faculty/staff trainings in collaboration with Brownsville PD, and the soon-to-be installed new security camera system. And of course, we have continued to work on enhancing our academic program to give your student all the necessary tools to be successful here at St. Joe and beyond. SJA is truly blessed. With all the great things happening at SJA, we have also come to understand that some of you have concerns and thoughts about a few of the policies at St. Joe, particularly those around grooming and dress code. We would like to thank those families who reached out to the SJA administration directly to discuss your concerns. Please know that our doors are always open to you and we encourage you to visit or speak with us immediately if there are concerns you’d like us to address. Based on the feedback and information that has been brought to us so far, we’d like a moment to share information with all of you to ensure that you have the accurate facts, as we have come to find there is a lot of misinformation circulating: -
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SJA has always had policies on dress code and grooming. While they might not have been enforced as closely as we would’ve liked in recent years due to a variety of reasons, the expectation now is that students are in dress code and are properly groomed, in accordance with the policies outline in the handbook. Our new Vice-Principal, Mr. Martinez, has numerous responsibilities. One of them being to oversee student life in all areas—not just dress code and grooming. While many may feel “that is all he focuses on”, we can assure you that is not true. In fact, he spends very little of his day dealing with dress code issues. These concerns are only representative of a very small population of our school community. We estimate over 90% of our student body are following SJA policies on grooming and dress code, and we are thankful to those who agreed to live up to the standards set by the school.