Despite this being a short school week in certainly feel like a lot went on! Here are some of the happenings this week:
First, it was a big week for our athletic program. Congrats to Head Coach Mary Millman and the Lady Knights’ Volleyball Program for being named MAC Co-Champions. This is the first ever volleyball MAC title for Assumption. What an awesome accomplishment for these ladies.
It was also a big week for our girls cross country team who placed second at the regional meet last night. This qualifies them for the 2011 state cross country meet. Erica Grubbs and Rebecca Mallon were both top ten finishers.
Congratulations to wrestler Topher Carton who committed to the University of Iowa this week. It will be great to see Topher wrestling for such a great program in the years to come.
Our insurance walk-through this week went very well. Eric did a nice job addressing the suggestions that he made last year and the inspector even commented that, “we make his job very easy.” His main suggestions for improvement for next year was to replace an exit light in the gym (already done) and to purchase a full body harness for Eric for when he works on the roof (we are looking for one).
I met with the English Department about how their pilot study of the computer program Turn It In is progressing. It seems there are many positives to this online paper submission and citation checking program. We will continue with the test of the program for another month and then make a decision on purchasing a full license.
We continue to work on developing a tool for classroom walk-throughs for administration. Classroom walk-throughs provide the administrative team with a way to observe a teacher and quantify 3-5 data points which are recorded on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. While it may seem like an easy process to “look for good teaching” it can be much more difficult to quantify. We will continue to work on making this process beneficial for everyone.
We are working on finalizing all of the little details prior to our 401K switchover. Our new representatives will be here on October 31st for informational and individual sign-up meetings. I feel this will be a better option for our employees and give a more personal touch to our benefit package. Thanks to the finance committee for helping to improve Assumption High School.
On the admissions side of things we had a marketing committee meeting on Wednesday. Two of the major conversation pieces were the survey that we sent out to our parents and the upcoming information night on November 1st. I have spent a lot of time reading through the survey responses and feel like there is a ton of great information available to all of us at Assumption. At the suggestion of the committee we will explore ways to interpret this information and frame it in a way that is most beneficial to all of our fellow Knights.
We approved the final cut of our recruiting video and will be releasing it soon. We are all excited to get this up on the website, Facebook and our Twitter account.
On the development side of things we are putting the finishing touches on the Annual Report. Liz has done a nice job putting this together and I know the finished project will meet everyone’s expectations. As part of the improvement of this process we are working with Blackbaud, the company that produces our development software, to insure that our addresses are up to date. This is our first year doing it this way and we feel that this will decrease the amount of returned mail we receive.
We may be seeing a change to our student information system in the next couple of months. JMC is currently developing an online based program for schools. I spoke with one of the reps this week and received an email from another. We will be in a holding position until we see how the development of the program progresses.
Finally, I asked the administrative team to submit a list of five things they feel are our biggest challenges in the next five to ten years. After looking over their replies, I think our team has done a good job of framing some of the challenges we are facing and will continue to face in the future. These challenges will be of no surprise to most people. Here are a couple of examples:
- Continuing to make Assumption affordable for all families.
- Ensuring that what we are teaching is tied to the core standards and improving the education in the classroom.
- Making sure that our classes are rigorous, relevant, and preparing students for success beyond the walls of Assumption.
- Staying ahead of the curve in relevant technology for student use.
- Recruiting and retaining high quality faculty and staff.
- Developing integral and faith-based relationships in our diocese and our Quad Cities community in order to offer a curriculum of knowledge and experiential learning for all students, so that our actions are visible and reflect our mission statement.
- Continuing to develop programs that increase interest in our school and the opportunities we offer.
We are now working to find ways to better address the challenges we face. Very exciting stuff!
Wow! For such a short week it certainly was busy. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
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