Weekly Update 11/18/2013

On Monday night we held our Annual Donor Appreciation Dinner.   

This event is for individuals who have donated at least $500 to the Annual Appeal, $1,000 to the MVSTO, or have made a 5 year commitment to Embracing Our Future for $5,000 or more.  Every year I speak about the great things happening at Assumption. This year I decided to go back in history and look at how we have changed in only five years.  I feel that this is great information for Board members to have.  It was difficult to pare down everything that we have done, but I tried to highlight things we have accomplished in a wide variety of areas.  

Here are some of my comments:

Since 2008, enrollment has increased from 422 to 482 students.  Since 2008, 486 students have graduated from Assumption earning a total of $16,784,059 dollars in scholarship offers.   While at Assumption, those same 486 students completed 38,880 hours of community service.  

Over the past five years our students have celebrated mass together over 80 times, not taking into account the team masses they frequently attend.  Our students have collected over 100,000 lbs of food and helped to collect 10,000 diapers for the needy.  

The school has also grown academically. In 2008, Assumption offered 15 hours of college credits, we now offer 24 hours.  We have also expanded AP course offerings through both in-house and on-line opportunities.  Our increased enrollment has led to the need to hire more teachers.  The excellence of our teachers has been both nationally and locally honored, with Wendy Martin being nominated for Live with Kelly’s Teacher of the Year award, and Jan Luton winning the Lammers Teacher Excellence Award.  

Last year we added a robotics team through the First Tech Challenge grant allowing students to design, build, and program their robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams.  

Some of this is possible due to technology upgrades.  Five years ago there were 125 hardwired computers in 4 labs, and our teachers relied on overhead projectors to aid in their visual displays. Currently we are a wireless campus, and with each student being issued a laptop computer for use over their four years at Assumption, we have over 500 computers in the school.  Our teachers now utilize their own laptops and the 22 electronic whiteboards in our classrooms.  

In fine arts we have produced 26 plays and musicals, and we were selected to perform at the International Thespian Festival.  

Athletically in the last five year we have had 85 all-state athletes, 4 undefeated conference champs and over 20 state championship teams.  

We have remodeled the convent (twice), the library (twice), the auditorium, the small gym, the tech rooms, student services, the band and choir area, the cafeteria, the teachers’ lounge, 8 classrooms, installed a new large gym floor, installed a wireless clock system, installed cabinets to house some of our history and provide students a perspective throughout the years.  We have purchased new vehicles, repaired the roof, and replaced domestic hot water lines.  

We now run a successful daycare, which continues to expand.

Financially, we have decreased subsidy from our parishes at 1% annually for the last five years and increased teacher pay to compete with the public schools, all while keeping tuition increases low.  We also paid off our bond that was issued in 1998.

The Family Tuition Plan that so many of you have supported has seen huge changes over the last 5 years. We also continue to see families utilize the plan and it continues to grow.  Five years ago our tuition plan helped 456 students and funded a little over $550,000 in need.  Last year the Family Tuition Plan helped 654 students (198 more than 5 years ago) and provided $1,156,136 in assistance to help students attend Catholic schools in Scott County.  

So what hasn’t changed?

One thing that hasn’t changed is the value we place in our mission - to prepare students academically, spiritually, and morally for the opportunities and responsibilities of the future. 

Another thing that hasn’t changed is the current of caring that our community has for each other.  We have had some challenges and tragedy this year.  The one thing that helped us through and will continue to help us through is how our community comes together during times of need to support one another. 

We – and I emphasize we – have accomplished all of these things.  This isn’t the work of one person, it is that work of all of us. It was your generosity that helped to accomplish these things.  It was your sacrifice and your actions that said we can help provide a great Catholic education for our students and make Assumption High School and all the Catholic schools in Scott County successful.

So the question becomes, “what now?”  That is easy to answer.  I’ll take you back to Walt Disney "Around here we keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We're always exploring and experimenting."  With your continued help we will do just that.  We will open new doors, we will try new things and we will move Assumption forward.

Have a great weekend!

Updates for the Week 11/8/2013

Congrats to Liz King and the Assumption Knight Players on their performances of Lend Me a Tenor, our Volleyball team who makes their second straight trip to state, the Cross Country team that took 3^rd at state and the Football team who capped off another successful season!  Thanks to all of our seniors for their service to the Assumption family by putting on another wonderful Spaghetti Supper. 

Another congrats to Emily Coryn for all her hard work putting together another great Information Knight.  It is always wonderful to have our grade school students visit Assumption.  This night provides a tremendous opportunity for students and parents to learn about all of the great things Assumption has to offer, while getting a look inside the school, and having the opportunity to learn about the Family Tuition Plan.  It certainly seemed like everyone I talked to was there not because they were still trying to make a decision, but because they had already decided to attend AHS. 

We had a great showing at Assumption for the meeting with the Iowa Catholic Conference on the proposal for Educational Savings Accounts - final count was right around 60 people. With other Diocese in the state having already held a couple of meetings of their own, it was great to hold this information meeting here in Davenport.

After hearing from the Catholic lobbyists on Wednesday, I had the opportunity to hear from the public school lobbyists on Thursday at the AEA. As always, allowable growth will be an issue for them, along with start date and the teacher compensation system. I was happy to hear that there would be a major push to focus some lobbying efforts on ways to provide better mental health, bullying prevention, and suicide prevention in schools. I never understood why they spend so much time talking about start date when there are other valuable education issue to discuss.

Finally we will have our first session of North Scott Rotary today.  Should be exciting!

Have a great weekend!

Andy

Weekly Update 11/1/2013

Congrats to the football and volleyball teams on their first round victories in the playoffs.  Good luck to Girls’ Cross Country, KKD Soloists and Competition Cheer as they head off to State competitions this weekend.  Finally a special “break a leg” to the cast and crew of the fall play, Lend Me A Tenor!  If you are looking for some Sunday entertainment, I invite you to attend the 2:00 pm showing of the play and then stay for some dinner at the Annual Spaghetti Supper.  

 

In development, we wrapped up the addition of another $1,000 scholarship for students to attend Assumption.  The family I have been working with will be naming the scholarship after one of the family members.  What a great gift!  

We are finalizing plans on the Presidents’ Appreciation dinner and working on the Annual Report and Annual Appeal.   This week was also the week that we ported over our Blackbaud data for our target analytics project.  I am excited to see the information we get back and to begin using the data to strengthen our development efforts.

On the technology side, we had to do some trouble shooting on some of our electronic whiteboards.  While none of the problems were too serious, it still took a little time and effort to get everything back in working order.  I sometimes forget that we began this project over five years ago and technology does have a shelf life.  We will need to begin replacing some of the hardware on these units to keep them in top shape. 

I spent some time this week working to get the details in order for our second First Tech Challenge team.  Some of you may remember the First Tech Challenge from last year. There is still a lot of interest in the team, and we have been lucky enough to have a parent volunteer help us out.  Just to recap, the FTC website describes First Tech challenge as follows:

FTC is designed for those who want to compete head to head, using a sports model. Teams of up to 10 students are responsible for designing, building, and programming their robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. The robot kit is reusable from year-to-year and is programmed using a variety of languages. Teams, including coaches, mentors and volunteers, are required to develop strategy and build robots based on sound engineering principles. Awards are given for the competition as for well as for community outreach, design, and other real-world accomplishments.

Hope to see everyone this weekend at either the play or the Spaghetti Supper!

Weekly Update 9/13/2013

Just a reminder - the Board will meet on Monday.  This is an important meeting as we will have our first readings of the 500 and 600 series policies, which are next up in the 3 year review rotation. This will be the first reading so Board members have the opportunity to review the policies before we vote on any changes during next month’s meeting.  We will also vote on the amended budget that was approved by the Finance Committee on Friday.  We will spend time reviewing the changes, but things look fiscally solid for the current year. 

Another item we will discuss during Monday’s budget presentation is the implementation of a target analytics strategy for our development software.  This program will help us obtain better information from the 12,000+ records we have our systems. 

The Scott County Catholic Schools Advisory Board met on Monday.  Discussion items included the plans for Diocesan education strategic planning, the impacts of the current teacher leadership compensation proposal by the DE, marketing strategies, tuition models, and upcoming Board training for the Scott County schools.

The Scott County K12 Marketing Committee met this week.  Agenda items included: e-newsletter, bulletin inserts, Catholic Schools Week, and marketing funds balance. We also spent time discussing the Teddy Bear program for newly baptized children, as well as ways for relators to help market our schools.

On the facilities side of things we had some of our floors refinished this week and spent time discussing the stair system that will need to be installed in order to finish off the top floor of the daycare for student use.  We also looked into Dewitt Community School’s newly installed heating and cooling. It is an interesting system which we may consider for future heating and cooling needs.

I filled in as director of transportation this week due to our current director’s vacation.  Of course the heat wreaked some havoc with cancelations and changes in scheduling.  It also didn’t help that we had a bus blow an oil line on Monday, that couldn’t be fixed until Thursday.  Luckily, everything worked out well and we everyone got where they needed to be.  Special thanks to all the drivers who put up with the “rookie” director! Have a great weekend, and I’ll see everyone Monday.

Weekly Update 9/6/2013

Good luck to our volleyball and football teams in their competitions tonight and tomorrow.

Even though it has been a short week a lot has been accomplished. A couple of updates:

The daycare renovation project continues, and we had carpets cleaned in several daycare areas. We are exploring some updates to kitchen equipment and weighing out the repair vs. buy options. This was also the week for our semiannual bus inspections and everything went well.  

We have finalized a meeting with Blackbaud’s Target Analytics team. This group, which manufactures our development software, will help us to explore some ways to potentially enhance their software and make us more efficient in our utilization.  

I attended the AEA 9 Superintendents meeting on Thursday. The majority of the time was spent reviewing new legislation for this year with Iowa Department of Education officials. The two main areas of focus were teacher compensation and No Child Left Behind.  There seemed to be a lot of questions regarding the Teacher Leadership and Compensation system that is being implemented in the state. If you are interested, I encourage you to check it out here.  Our Scott County Catholic schools will need to keep a close eye on how this program develops as it could have an impact on the expectation of pay of teachers throughout the state.  

No Child Left Behind was another area of concern as Iowa has been rejected for a NCLB waiver. It remains to be seen what exactly this means for Iowa schools. If you remember back to when the legislation was passed, 2014 was kind of the magic year. All students in the nation were supposed to be proficient in 2014.  Of course, that won’t occur. It remains to be seen what will happen as a result.

We had an Investment Committee meeting Thursday, and there was a lot of great discussion.  This group will be looking over our investment policy to see if there needs to be any changes made.  

Tomorrow I will be here bright and early to open for the locker installers, as our dramatic increase in enrollment lead to a shortage of lockers.  I want to thank those students who have used the old lockers for these first couple of weeks.  Barring any complications, we should have all of them in nice new lockers no later than Tuesday.