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!
No comments:
Post a Comment