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!
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