TORONTO - Emily VanBerkum believes the “interdisciplinary” aspects of her Catholic liberal arts education have made her a well-rounded student.

“It’s very interdisciplinary and it relates to so many disciplines in your life, so many fields like business or politics,” said the fourth-year Christianity and Culture student at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College.

The Newman Theological College and St. Joseph’s Seminary communities in Edmonton are glad to be back in the same fold.

To make way for the Anthony Henday Highway, the college and seminary were forced to uproot and build a new home. They have since moved to new state-of-the-art facilities on the Pastoral Centre grounds, the seminary moving into its new home in August 2010, while classes at the college started in January 2011.

“And it’s very good to be back together again,” said Fr. Shayne Craig, rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary and president of Newman Theological College.

EDMONTON - When it came time to build the new St. Joseph’s Seminary, cutting expenses was a must. To save money, a pipe organ for the seminary chapel was left as a project for the future.

“We priced out how much an organ would be, and it’s a lot of money,” said Fr. Shayne Craig, seminary rector.

“For a new pipe organ, for the size we would want in the chapel, we were being quoted a price of $500,000.”

A battle is looming between the Ontario government and Catholic schools after the Education Minister rejected a key component of a new anti-bullying policy from the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association (OCSTA).

Laurel Broten is insisting that Catholic schools permit single-issue clubs such as gay-straight alliances despite the OCSTA’s outright rejection of such groups in a long-awaited document titled Respecting Differences.

Released Jan. 25, Respecting Difference affirms the Catholic identity of Catholic schools by stating that all clubs and activities must be “respectful of and consistent with Catholic teaching.” The document follows the Accepting Schools Act introduced last November by the minority Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty that would require all schools to accommodate gay-straight alliances or similar clubs under a different name.

The award is nice, but St. Patrick's Catholic Secondary School principal John Shanahan has a different measure of success.

Shanahan is one of 40 educators who will be honoured as "Canada's Outstanding Principals of 2012" by The Learning Partnership at a Feb. 28 gala dinner in Toronto's Sheraton Centre. The Learning Partnership is a charity that advocates for and supports public education. It's best known for Take Your Kids to Work day.

Shanahan is bashful, unwilling to talk about the award as a personal achievement. But he has lots to say about his school, his teachers and most of all his students.

Black Friday costs the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board big money. On the day in November when U.S. shopping malls offer crazy bargains the board had 133 of its employees off work — 48 claimed a personal day; the rest called in sick.

Teachers, janitors, secretaries call in sick in unusual numbers on Mondays, Fridays, before a long weekend, before March break and around American Thanksgiving, according to Jamie Bumbacco, the Windsor-Essex board’s executive superintendent of human resources.

TORONTO - The Marshall Medium student newspaper was looking for hot topics for its spring 2011 issue. So when 12th-grader Erica Lenti pitched a story about the gay-straight alliances springing up in Ontario schools, the newspaper staff was sold.

Lenti interviewed staff and students at Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School in Toronto and the article passed through editing. But when Lenti picked up a copy of The Medium, she learned her story had been pulled.

Her facts were incorrect, she was told. Her take: school administrators wanted nothing to do with the topic.

TORONTO - Terence Sheridan, the newly appointed president of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College School, may be the first layperson to lead the school, but he’s no stranger to the Basilian tradition of the community.

An alumnus of the Toronto all-boys private school, Sheridan has spent the last 15 years as a teacher, administrator and coach at St. Michael’s. And in July 2012, he will succeed Fr. Joseph Redican, C.S.B., as president. During his two-year term, Sheridan will also continue to serve as principal of the school, a role he has held since January.

TORONTO - During a trip to Bangladesh, Angela Grace Macri watched with her daughter, Mary Anne, as Bangladeshi mothers taught children the lessons they learned at the Amarok Society’s “Angela Women’s School.”

It’s a school named after Macri, the 2011 Toronto Catholic District School Board Alumni Award winner.

Macri says helping to educate girls through her volunteer work with the non-profit Amarok Society borrows lessons learned about her Catholic faith from her parents and her teachers at Toronto’s Loretto Abbey High School.

TORONTO - Close to 7,000 Catholic elementary students could lose their breakfast program if proposed City of Toronto budget cuts are passed, says Trustee Maria Rizzo.

Without the breakfast program, kids will be going to school hungry, she said, and would be detrimental to student learning.

“I hope (Mayor) Rob Ford can make sure they'll give them a little bit of gravy,” Rizzo told The Catholic Register.