Weekly Update 9-16-2011

I hope that your week is going as well as ours!   After a huge football victory last week against Bettendorf, and big volleyball and football victories against Central this week, there is a lot to be excited about.  There was a special feeling last Friday night, and I was so proud of our students, fans, parents, administrators and coaches.  We have received a lot of comments and compliments about how it was a great example of what Assumption is all about.   It truly was a night of “One in the Spirit.”

A couple of other updates from this week:

We made the switch in our server system for our computers last Monday, and it went off without too many problems.  This will solve a lot of our storage space issues and should decrease the amount of problems we have been experiencing lately.  

Jay Winger from Anderson-Ladd did the final walkthrough for our new gym floor.   We had a nice conversation about the process and both agree that it matches what we were expecting.  He took some pictures and asked for a letter of recommendation for the company, which I will be happy to supply.

I spent some time this week in classrooms, and it was a great experience.  I had the opportunity to spend some much needed time talking to both students and teachers about the academic environment at AHS.  I saw some great things happening and had the opportunity to listen to students give speeches, presentation and utilize technology in their learning.    

Friday morning the Finance Committee met and discussed August financials and the revised budget for 2011-2012.  The Finance Committee voted to recommend the budget. Carey will give an extensive presentation at Monday’s Board meeting, so I won’t steal too much of her thunder. 

I finished preparing a grant for presentation on Monday.  The proposed project will provide for the creation of three mobile computer labs consisting of 30 computers each.  The majority of Assumption students spend large amounts of time writing, researching, and studying with the aid of our computer labs, and such constant use has created the need for additional computers to better serve student needs.  Through the purchase of 90 computers and computer storage carts, the project will allow the opportunity for technology to be utilized in every classroom throughout the school.

We have added another tool to our teachers’ toolbox this week with the addition of a program called Turn-It-In.  This program gives our students the ability to submit papers online where teachers can grade them and check for grammatical errors and originality.  Our English department has been the lead on this project and I have been acting as a “consultant.”  We have a 3 month test license to see if we like it before making the full purchase. 

I will be presenting at the 2011 Diocesan Ministries Conference in Carroll on Monday.  They have asked that I focus on Catholic school finance.  They are very interested in how our Family Tuition Plan and STO programs work together and the positive results we have seen at the school level because of these programs.