As you may have noticed, the pennants flying in the parish yard look a bit tattered and faded. The cost to replace them with purchased commercial pennants would be nearly $650. However, material to replace them can be purchased quite reasonably if we can find someone to sew them. If you have the talent to do this, please let me know.
Library moving down, nursery moving up
- from Ross Mast, Junior Warden
We recently discovered that Holy Cross has not been in compliance with the diocesan policy for Safeguarding God’s Children. This means that, in the event an incident should occur involving any of our children, the parish would not be covered by the diocesan liability insurance plan. As a first step, the Safeguarding God’s Children training session was held at Holy Cross. There will be other opportunities in the future so that all members of the parish required to attend the training can do so.
One requirement of the policy is that there must be either two trained adults in the nursery at all times, or alternatively one adult as long as they are within sight and hearing distance of other adults. Unfortunately, our current nursery attendant schedule often only has one adult assigned and the nursery is in a place usually out of sight of other adults.
In discussing this, as well as considering ways to make our parish more inviting to newcomers, the Vestry has decided to relocate the nursery to where the library is presently. Being conscious of the potential for “noise” from the nursery impacting worship services, doors with windows will be installed. This will allow the doors to be closed during services, but continue the practice of having a single adult attendant in the nursery, as they will be within sight of the ushers during services.
There are other added benefits of this move as well. Having the nursery on our main floor will make it easier for parents to monitor their children who want to play in the nursery during post-service activities like coffee hour. Also, with the close proximity of the nursery to the sanctuary, we hope that parents of infants may be more inclined to leave their children in the nursery during services.
The library will be moved to one of the lower level “expansion” rooms. These rooms are actually squarer, therefore better suited to the round table presently used in the library. The current nursery room will become a classroom, as starting in the fall we will have a need for a second classroom as well.
