Friday Update 12/29/2011

I hope everyone had a great holiday and is looking forward to the New Year.  This always a hectic time of the year down in the Business Office, so here are a couple updates from the last two weeks.

The Mississippi Valley STO board had its annual meeting Thursday, and we are happy to report that we once again were able to meet the cap set for us by the state of Iowa.  This tuition assistance program is such a valuable resource for the Scott County K-12 Catholic Schools and other private schools in the state, providing aid in a time of need.  Congrats to Linda Duffy, Liz King and Carey Jones for their hard work on this program.  

I attended a 1:1 computer meeting at the AEA and learned a great deal from the other schools that were in attendance.  It seems that the surrounding schools are in various states of technology upgrades, some much further along than others.  It was interesting to hear from the schools that are already knee deep in the 1:1 computer initiative, and also those who are wrestling with the challenges of starting such a program.  

Over break we made a couple significant purchases.  One of these purchases was a practice AED machine and manikins and to train all our students in CPR. This should be a valuable program and I look forward to seeing it completed annually.  

The second purchase was a mobile laptop lab for our students and teachers.  With the request for computer usage increasing significantly over the last several years this purchase should help alleviate the computer shortage issue by increasing our availability by 30 computers.  

Carey and I spent some time this week working on our eRate forms.  This is something we fill out annually to receive affordable telecommunication and internet services.  The process was made a little more difficult this year when we received word that the AEA would no longer be providing a free aggregate line from Assumption to the AEA.  This created the need for us to bid out through something called a form 470 for a line to the AEA to retain internet access. In the end it will all work out fine, but it did create some short term stress for all of our Catholic school administrators.

Hope you all have a great New Year!

Friday Update 12/16/2011

We should have an exciting close to the week tonight with the Wall of Fame Induction Ceremony and the class of 2011 pizza party in the cafeteria during halftime of the girls basketball game.  It is a huge year for the Wall of Fame, with 22 athletes and 17 teams being inducted this evening.  We started hosting the “class reunion” pizza party on this evening several years ago, and it has been a great opportunity for me to keep in touch with our young alums.

Monday I assisted Linda with an Embracing Our Future presentation.  After spending a lot of time on the numbers over the last several weeks, it is great to see how the Family Tuition Plan has helped our local schools remain a viable option for area families.  While we have changed the pattern of decreasing enrollment with the EOF and STO, there is still a lot of work to be done and challenges ahead.  Also, remember that in order to receive the 65% tax credit on your Iowa taxes this year, donations to the STO need to be made before January 1^st.

I had a fun opportunity this week to speak with some religion classes about the history of Assumption.  They are currently learning about the history of some Catholic colleges and universities, and Coach Barrer asked me to speak briefly on Assumption’s beginnings.  It was fun to talk about Saint Ambrose Academy and Immaculate Conception Academy’s importance in the history of Assumption.  I also spoke about the first year of Assumption and some of the all priest school board discussions including:

•        Tuition was set at $125 for Catholic students, $250 for    Non-Catholic students

•        The decision that both principals would receive the same salary

•        First talks regarding tuition assistance

•        Concern over paving of West Central Park

•        Providing a pension plan.

•        Lay teacher salary was set at $3,700 per year

•        Hourly pay was $1.73 per hour

•        First discussions of parish assessment

The finance committee met Friday morning to go over our annual audit, which will be presented to the board on Monday.  Once again, things look good for Assumption and we were complemented by the auditor for strong fiscal management.  The meeting ended with the committee voting to recommend a subsidy and tuition for next year.  Both of these issues will be brought before the board for a vote on Monday.

The Scott County Catholic School Principals met on Friday and discussed the following topics:  5th grade band festival, non-parishioner/non-Catholic tuition rates and board action, career fair, summer math for teachers, and algebra.

I hope to see everyone tonight at the game and Wall of Fame Induction and 2011 alumni reunion!

Have a great weekend. 

Weekly update 12/19/2011

Our students certainly had a busy week with Immaculate Conception mass, RSVP leadership group and Summit training, the Christmas band concert, wrestling meet and basketball games.  It is tough to believe that we are only a few weeks off from final exams and the end for the semester.  In talking 1with some of our students this week, it seems that finals are a big focus of their lives right now.

This week began with some great news for not only our employees, but also Assumption.  Carey and I had a meeting with our insurance agent regarding our health insurance increases for this year. As many people did, we saw a hefty increase to our rates last year and were expecting the worst.  The great news is that our standard plan did not change at all and our HSA plan saw a decrease!

The Assumption Foundation Board met Tuesday and spent a lot of time discussing the impact of the tumultuous European situation on our investments. The conversation then turned to a discussion of the Family Tuition Plan and the current state of EOF funds. The board was also interested in the current state of education and the impact of the Iowa Blueprint not only at Assumption, but at  all schools.

 

I had lunch with Lourdes’ school board President, Jim Kersten, Wednesday, and we had a great discussion about Catholic schools in Scott County.  I was able to share some of Assumption’s major initiatives over the past 10 years and we spoke at length about the challenges our schools face and some ways we can partner to help each other in the coming years. 

 

I had a very exciting meeting with several of the Deans and President of Scott Community College this week about exploring ways Assumption can offer additional college classes on campus, increasing the number of college credits our students can graduate with.  It seems that SCC is open to an increased partnership and there are many affordable options for us to expand this relationship.

 

The other highlight of my visit to SCC was a tour of their career and technical programs facilities.  I was amazed at the variety of programming offered - everything from culinary arts to mechanics and diesel engine technology.  This tour led to a discussion of ways to provide some of these opportunities to Assumption students.  There is a lot of work to be done to make these programs more accessible, but if there is a need we will do what we can to make it happen. 

I spent a couple of hours on Thursday morning with local State Legislators Roby Smith, Mary Smith, Shawn Hammerlink, Jim Lykam, Mark Lofgren, Linda Miller, Cindy Winkler, and Jim Hahn about upcoming legislative session and the impact it could have on the tone of education in the state. I was most interested in conversations about the fiscal state of the state, the Iowa Blueprint, and state control of educational standards. There seems to be a feeling amongst some of the superintendents that reducing local control and increasing state control would solve some problems.  I think we should be careful when asking for that, as we may lose the ability to address unique situations that occur at all of our schools. 

On Thursday Carey Jones and I hosted the annual subsidy luncheon with the priests of our supporting parishes to approve the coming year’s parish subsidy. Carey gave a wonderful presentation to the priests and business managers, and the subsidy amount was approved for the upcoming year. It is so wonderful to have supportive priests in our local parishes and it was great to hear their positive thoughts on Assumption.  One thing that helps is we have reduced subsidy for 7 years in a row, opposed to increasing it each year as we had in the past.  If we had continued on the path we were heading down 10 years ago, total subsidy would currently be $300,000 more than what it was this year. We had a discussion about this, and I credited our previous administrators, especially Linda and Carey, for managing our expenses and income in fiscally responsible way. 

We are interviewing Friday to fill a recent vacancy in our English department.  We are planning to have this vacancy filled by early next week. 

Have a great weekend!

Weekly Update 12/2/2011

After a refreshing Thanksgiving break it is great for all of us to be back at school.  With the start of winter sports, upcoming Christmas band and choir concerts and children’s show, and finals in a month, it is tough to believe that we are almost halfway through the school year!

The best experience of my week was getting to speak with the seniors in Mrs. Luton’s English classes.  I asked the seniors to think back on their experience at Assumption and come up with some things to be celebrated as well as areas where they feel there were missed opportunities.  I was very impressed with the maturity, focus and insight of our senior class.  They were able to provide a unique perspective on where to focus our efforts to improve Assumption.  Some of the things mentioned were easy fixes and we have already started to address them.  Other ideas for improvement included additional foreign language offerings including sign language, engineering and science classes, job shadowing or work experience programs and increasing access to technology.  Many different ways to improve the educational experience at Assumption were discussed, and each senior is to write a one page summary of their ideas.  I assured them that I will read every single one of them and I can’t wait to get each student’s perspective.   

We have been working on a way to implement Microsoft’s Live@edu program for testing.  This would provide our students with online access to the Word, Excel and PowerPoint for a great cost: free.  Teachers are already using the GoogleDocs programs and we would like to see how Microsoft’s free program access compares.  

In preparation for our Foundation meeting next week, we had an Investment committee meeting on Wednesday.  There were concerns about the recent state of the market with the problems in Europe, and we wanted to ensure that we were well positioned for recovery from this credit crisis.  I believe we all feel a little bit better after the presentation from US Bank. 

The administrators from the Scott County Catholic Schools met this week.  Topics discussed included: tuition rates, registration fees, pre-school, daycare rates, SAU STEM, I Have a Plan, middle school math teacher collaboration, salary information , science curriculum, EOF/FTP update, and technology.

The Scott County K-12 Marketing Committee met Thursday and there are a ton of great things going on at our schools!  I was especially impressed with how much new All Saints principal, Jeanne Von Feldt, has already done for that school.  She is a tremendous addition to our already strong group of elementary school administrators.  We are also preparing for our annual “marketing blitz” that occurs during Catholic Schools Week.  If you remember last year we had the cutouts of students at various places throughout Davenport and Bettendorf. 

The Scott County K-12 Finance Committee met Thursday night. We spent a significant amount of time discussing the historical numbers from our schools and parishes, along with the current state of tuition assistance, tuition rates for the elementary schools and ways to be more consistent with our fee structures.  It was great to see the group working together to ensure the financial success of all of our schools. 

Friday I spoke at the April Knight Christmas Luncheon and as always it was a great experience.  It is so nice to speak with such a great group of people who really care about Assumption and the future of Catholic education in Scott County.  The highlight had to be the performance by are Jazz choir.  They sounded incredible!

Congrats to the KKD on their new state championship, this makes 15 straight years!  Also, congratulations to Coaches Barrer, Youngblut and Bush on their wins this week.  Congrats to Lynn Day and the rest of the spiritual life team on planning and executing a successful reconciliation service.

Have a great weekend!