Updates for the Week 12/14/2012

With a busy week of concerts, basketball games, wrestling meets, the children’s show (at 2:00 both Saturday and Sunday!) and preparing for finals next week, it is easy to understand why our students and families are probably ready for a little time to sit still and enjoy the holiday season.  As we roll into the last week before Christmas break a few updates:

We will be holding our last board meeting of the year on Monday, and the Finance Committee met Friday to discuss our annual audit, subsidy, and tuition.

The Priest’s Luncheon was held this past Tuesday, and the priests unanimously approved parish subsidy for the upcoming year.

The Annual Appeal mailing is at the printers and should hopefully be in mailboxes next week.

In Development, we are working on the annual Wall of Fame Night and pizza party for the Class of 2012.

 

We are also working to compile all the necessary insurance information for our renewal meeting next Monday.

Work on marketing continued this week with our Marketing Committee meeting Thursday morning.  We are starting some Catholic School Week initiatives for Assumption, as well as partnering with the elementary schools to start an all school choir for Catholic Schools Week Mass and to complete a K-12 service project.

We had a Catholic School Administrator meeting on Friday.  Discussion topics included playing time for athletics, tuition, cleaning requirements, math, CSW Mass, crisis planning, busing and joint marketing.

Updates for the Week 12/7/12

Congrats to Leslie LaCorte and the Assumption Knight Players on being invited to perform The Pitmen Painters at the International Thespian Festival!  Our students received a superior rating from the Educational Theatre Association and will be one of ten schools performing at the festival.  What a great accomplishment for our fine arts program!

A couple of updates for the week:

Carey and I continue to work with the Diocese on the potential for a group insurance program.  We will have our second meeting on Friday to discuss the benefits and challenges of a collective group insurance plan.   

This really was a week of celebrating AHS.  The President’s Appreciation Dinner was held at the Crow Valley on Wednesday night and was a huge success thanks to the hard work of Liz King.  We had a great turnout, and the speeches by Mrs. Murphy and Ms. Wuhlfekuhle were fantastic.  It was a great chance to celebrate the generosity of our donors to Embracing our Future, the Mississippi Valley STO, and the Annual Appeal.  It also was a great chance to highlight not only the accomplishments of our students, but also all the facilities upgrades we have completed in the last year.  The highlight of the night was a performance by one of our jazz bands, the JazzKnights.  These students gave an unbelievable performance!

The Annual April Knight Christmas Luncheon was held Friday, and as always it had record breaking attendance.  Thanks to Susie Foster and Jane Coryn for all of their hard work with the luncheon and April Knight. Mrs. Murphy was this year’s speaker, and she did a tremendous job highlighting all the spiritual, academic, and extracurricular achievements of our students.  The JazzKnights also gave a wonderful performance at this event.  It is inspiring to see so many people who really care about Assumption and the future of Catholic education in Scott County.  

Wednesday brought our annual insurance walkthrough, and everything went very well.  Eric Leuth does a tremendous job of keeping us in compliance and fixing any issues that come up during these visit.  The inspector always compliments our efforts and it is nice to be able to stay ahead of any potential problems.

The K-12 Marketing Committee met Thursday, and continues to work on preparing for Catholic Schools Week.  

I also had a chance to meet with local legislators and hear the Lieutenant Governor and Director of Education speak at the AEA Thursday.  I would encourage you to check out the education proposal that was released several weeks ago from the Governor’s office here .  After listening to the legislators speak, it seems as though the upcoming session will focus on property tax relief, creation of job opportunities for the unemployed, and education reform.  Much of the education reform will focus on setting allowable growth, aligning instruction to the Iowa Core, start date for schools, and teacher evaluation.  It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this session.

Weekly Updates 11/30/12

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday and is getting back into the swing of things. At Assumption we have hit the ground running with all our winter athletics competing this week and over the upcoming weekend.  Congrats to KKD on their state championship in jazz and pom, and good luck to all our students in their competitions this weekend.

In the development department Liz continues her hard work on the annual appeal.  The plan is for these wonderful mailings to be in your mailboxes in the next couple of weeks.  The annual President’s Appreciation dinner will be held next week, and we are putting the finishing touches on our presentations.  It should be a great night and we look forward to celebrating the generosity of our supporters. 

The Development Office also welcomed Jordan Gizzarelli (’99) to our staff this week as Alumni Relations Director.  Jordan holds a B.A. degree in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University, and comes to us with experience as a coordinator of Marketing and Communication at Northwestern University.  Jordan is off to a good start and is proving himself to be a valuable addition to an already strong staff.  Along with his Development responsibilities, he will also be helping out with the school yearbook.  

On the business side of things, we are preparing for Assumption’s Annual Priests luncheon.  This is the time of the year when we discuss the parish subsidy for our 9 supporting parishes.  Once again we are doing our best to take some of the burden off of our supporting parishes by budgeting for another 1% decrease in subsidy.  This will be the 8^th year that we have decreased subsidy, direct benefit to our parishes.  

I attended Rotary meetings this week in Davenport and North Scott. Carey and I also participated in an insurance meeting for the Diocese of Davenport.  The Diocese is interested in pursuing a collective group plan, and the meeting was to discuss what that would look like.  

Have a great weekend!

Updates for the week 11/15/12

With a short week coming up, there have certainly been a lot of things to accomplish before the Thanksgiving holiday.  Since we have a short week next week, , I’ll try to not only hit the highlights of this past week, but also upcoming events for next week.

Here are some recent happenings:

Our 2011-2013 Annual Report should be arriving at your homes very soon.  Thanks to Liz King for all of the hard work she puts into this terrific and essential piece of communication.  It really is a ton of work to get everything put together and make sure it is close to perfect as possible.  This year will not disappoint in terms of aesthetics and information about the previous year.

We have been working on switching our beverage supplier over from Mid-Continent to Pepsi.  At this time we feel this is a solid choice, and we look forward to having a full service vendor for our soft drinks.

To go along with the switch, the Booster Club has agreed to manage our winter sports season concessions.  Thanks to Chris Martens, Booster Club President and all of the members of the Booster Club for agreeing to take the lead in this tremendous service to our families and visitors.  They have some great ideas to make this winter sports season exceptional for all game attendees.   

The Scott County Catholic Schools Advisory Board met Monday and discussed, STO status, recent developments at the state level on teacher pay, religion textbooks, the Year of Faith, technology in schools, 8^th grade math curriculum, Catholic Schools Week, career fair for 8^th graders, formation of a 6-12 choir to sing at Catholic Schools week mass, and ways for our schools to partner to solve some of the challenges we face.

A lot of effort has been invested in securing funding for improvements in our fine arts areas. This effort was helped along this week when we received a grant from the Scott County Regional Authority.  A grant request has also been completed and submitted to the Knouse Trust. Additional funding from the general fund and Band Boosters will help make this significant project possible. 

I attended the Association of Illinois Fundraising Professionals Conference on Wednesday, and it did not disappoint!   Presenter, Tom Ahern, imparted a lot a lot of useful information, and I look forward to attending the IFPC’s next conference in the fall.   

Just a reminder, we will have our November Board meeting on Monday.  Please let me know if there are any items that need to be added to the agenda as soon as possible so we can prepare any pertinent information in advance.

Next weekend we will welcome the Class of 2002 for their 10 year reunion. I will be giving a tour of the school, and look forward to meeting and getting to know more of our alumni. 

Have a great weekend!

Updates for the Week 11/9/2012

Congrats to Leslie LaCorte and the Assumption Knight Players on their wonderful performance this past weekend, and break a leg as they head to UNI to perform The Pitman Painters at Iowa Thespian Festival!  

Our ad hoc facilities committee held their final meeting Monday night, and we are working to put together a summary report. The committee’s recommendation committee will be presented at next Board meeting on the 19^th of November.  

Tuesday brought an in-service for our teaching staff. Bridget did a nice job of framing the Career Development Plan, which is required by the State of Iowa for all of our teachers.  This was followed by a technology in-service on use of our electronic whiteboards.  I then spent the afternoon at All Saints presenting on technology resources to use in their classrooms.  If you are interested in viewing the presentation, click here.

Congrats to Emily Coryn on her hard work putting together another great Information Knight.  It is always wonderful to have our grade school students visit Assumption.  This night provides a tremendous opportunity for students and parents to learn about all of the great things Assumption has to offer, while getting a look inside the school and having the opportunity to hear about the Family Tuition Plan.

We had our Scott County Administrator meeting on Thursday morning.  Items discussed included: Iowa Core Math, 8th grade career fair, STEM conference for teachers at St. Ambrose, tuition for the upcoming school year, Catholic Schools Week mass, and bandwidth changes for the upcoming school year.

I attended our first round game at state volleyball on Thursday.  Congrats to these talented young women on their accomplishments this season.  I also attended North Scott Rotary on Friday

We received some great news on Friday!  Some of you may remember me mentioning several months ago that I was preparing a grant for the Scott County Regional Authority.  Our SCRA grant request was for funding for improvements in the band and choir area.  These improvements included:

1.      Install sound paneling in both band and choir rooms to eliminate the “echo chamber” effect.

2.      Install a sound system in the band room which allows for the recording and playback of performances. 

I am pleased to announce that we have received a grant from SCRA to help with these projects.  This should be a great enhancement to our band and choir facilities.

Have a great weekend!

Andy