Weekly Update 2/24/12

I am sure ending the week with a two hour late start just breaks the hearts of our student body.  The only thing that would be worse would be canceling on a Friday:)

We started the week with Administrative and Board Meetings on Monday.  Once again a lot of the Admin Meeting was spent planning for coverage of upcoming events.  With three tournament basketball games and a band concert, it certainly made for a busy week.  Items discussed at the Board Meeting included:  administrator evaluation process, topics being discussed by the SIAC committee, ongoing exploration of heating and air, enrollment projections, potential marketing committee changes, staff salary comparison of Scott County Catholic Schools and Assumption financial statements.  

Enrollment for next year is progressing very well with 85 students already registered, hopefully indicating another respectably sized freshman class for Assumption.  Typically we do not have this many students registered at this time of the year.  Emily Faulhaber is certainly doing a nice job getting Assumption out in front of the grade school students.

We continue to work on the budget process for the upcoming school year.  With subsidy set and a good idea of where enrollment will be, we are fairly certain on the revenue side of things.  We are now knee deep in the hard work of figuring out expenditures.  For those of you who aren’t aware, every year budget sheets are given to our academic department chairs, as well as individuals in charge of departments such as admissions, technology and athletics.  Our people are allowed to adjust their budget based on perceived needs, allowing us the ability to have a good dialogue about potential budgetary changes.   

Ash Wednesday was celebrated with Mass and a great homily by Fr. Tom. The music in mass was fantastic, and it was a wonderful service in general.  Thanks to all those who made it happen. 

We spent another week of teacher in-service working on the Iowa Core Alignment Tool.  Teachers seem to understand the process, which isn’t surprising given the caliber of our staff. 

Eric Leuth and I met with contractors Thursday to clarify the phasing plan we are hoping to utilize for our new heating system in order to get a properly structured price bid. It was great to hear that we will be able to phase this project given the initial price estimates we have seen.    

The Scott County principals met  on Friday to discuss the following issues:  decoding the new Iowa Assessment data, how to reimburse teachers for the summer math workshop, how we could still partner on increasing bandwidth, organization of a Scott County Catholic School tech coordinator meeting, the new JMC online program and hosting of the service, 5th grade band concert details, procedures for Catholic league athletics, how the SCRA grant process works, and whether the Diocese will be putting together a CIPA(Child Internet Protection Act) policy.

Finally, I know there were a lot of events this week, but I feel the need to highlight one performance.  I was so impressed with our band on Thursday night.  Ms. Wulfekuhle took a gamble and had her student sight read a piece, giving those in attendance a look into how she teaches a new piece of music.  She talked about higher order thinking skills and explained how the students learn new music. Amazing job band and Ms. Wulfekuhle!

Weekly Update 2/17/12

What an exciting week to be a Knight!  Congrats to Ellen Williamson and the AHS choir on a wonderful performance Monday night.  I was so impressed with the caliber of music showcased by our talented students.  Congrats to alum Coach Pete Bush on capturing back-to-back state wrestling championships Wednesday night.  For those of you that were there or tuned in on the radio, it was certainly a night to remember.  Keep the trains rolling on today and Saturday.  Congrats to girls’ basketball and Coach Mallory Youngblut on their first round victory on the road to state, and good luck Saturday.  The things our students continue to accomplish never cease to amaze me.

A couple of happenings from this week:

With all of the events this week, much of the administrative team meeting was spent on logistical details for who would be where, when.  One of the things that people seldom see is the amount of behind the scenes planning that goes into the organization of weeks with this many exciting events.  It is great to work with a team where everyone chips in to make sure things runs smoothly for our students, sponsors, coaches, parents and fans.  

We also spent some time in the Administrative meeting discussing academic issues such as our pass/fail policy, auditing classes, the Regents admission index, grading scales and class rank.  I know it seems like these issues come up every few years, but we continue to assess our current practices to make sure we are doing the right things for our students. 

We will once again be completing the 360⁰ evaluation process we began last year.  This provides faculty, staff, and board members with a chance to review the performance of administration.  Last year it was great experience not only hear what people felt were strengths, but also areas for improvement.  It made our annual evaluation process a valuable improvement tool.

We continued our Iowa Core Alignment Tool training for teachers on Wednesday.  They are working to determine the areas where we need to address the 21^st century skills as stated in the Iowa core document.  One of the best things to come from this process is the discussion our teachers are having as a result of these meetings.  Every conversation should be leading us to a better understanding of how to make Assumption a better school.

After the marketing meeting this week we spent a lot of time discussing ways to improve the functioning of the committee.  Questions that were brought up during the meeting lead us to critique how each of us saw the committee functioning.  We will continue to look at ways to make this a committee that accomplishes the task of successfully marketing Assumption. 

We have a Scott County Principals’ meeting scheduled for this afternoon.  Issues scheduled to be discussed include: Iowa Assessment data, summer math workshop, bandwidth, tech coordinator meeting, and JMC.  It is always great to discuss ways that we can collaborate and work to solve problems together.

Good luck to the wrestlers and basketball teams this weekend.  Have a great weekend and as always give me a call or send an email with questions.

Weekly Update 2/10/12

The mobile laptop lab went live this week and within the span of an hour was already booked for classroom use.  So for the response and usage has been great.  Of course, all great initiatives have their share of nuances which need to be dealt with and this project has been no exception.   The good thing is having gone through the set up process has taught me lessons that will make future technology deployment much easier. 

We are currently undergoing a study on printer usage within the school.  One technology issue that has been frustrating for both teachers and students is availability of printers.  The study is actually a program on our server which tracks the use of each printer so we can tell where our “hot spots” are and if we need to look at alternative solutions for the approximately 15 printers  in the school right now.

The finishing touches are being put on our brand new sound system in the large gym. The last component will be the addition of an antenna to provide for better connect ability for our wireless mics.

Wednesday I attended a conference on the financial market and tax outlook for 2012.  The purpose was to give individuals and businesses a look at potential tax changes in the upcoming year.  There was a ton of great information, especially for a person that loves learning about the economy and financial markets.  To summarize the opinion of the presenter: Europe will enter a recession, there will be moderate to sub-par growth in the US, unemployment will drop slightly and housing should begin to see some recovery.  We shall see how these predictions play out.

 

I had a great experience speaking at All Saints this week about the Family Tuition Plan.  They had two sessions for incoming Kindergarten parents, one in the morning and one in the evening. Both were well attended and the FTP information was well received.  It seems as though our parents are starting to have a better knowledge of tuition assistance options, but we still need to keep getting the message out.

 

I lead the teacher professional development on Wednesday and we spent our hour working on the Iowa Core Alignment Tool or ICAT. This session was the “ICAT camp” where our teachers worked through the introductory information.  We will spend the next three weeks working through the ICAT tool. 

  

Tonight is Pack the Stadium Knight as both our boys and girls basketball teams have the chance to secure MAC championships.  Tomorrow our wrestlers head to Mount Vernon for sectionals.  I hope to see all of you at some point this weekend!

Updates for the Week 2/3/12

Catholic Schools Week is drawing to a close, with the highlight again this year being All School Mass on Thursday.  It is such a great experience and atmosphere not only for our students, but also the students in our Catholic grade schools.  Special thanks to Miss Faulhaber, Mrs. Day, Miss Pohlmann, Mr. Ries and Mr. Elbert for all of the hard work they put into the service.  The day tends to be very hectic, but they handled it with grace and put on a great service.

Our continued quest for increased internet speed and has certainly resulted in a lot of research about Assumption, some of which called for a trip through the tunnels underneath the school.  There is nothing better than wearing dress clothes and traipsing through a 4 foot high mud floored tunnel.  One reason for taking part in this adventure was to better understand the wiring of the school, which made it easier to explain our current situation to the contractor we talked with on Thursday.  Over the long term, it seems that bringing fiber optic cabling into our building is the best possible resolution, and we will receive bids for this early next week.

    

The process of determining the best possible solution for our heating and cooling needs continued this week with more meetings, walkthroughs and proposals.  Information will be flowing in over the next several months and we will continue to evaluate our options as we move closer to budget time.

 

Thursday night we held our informational 8^th grade parent meeting.  It was well attended and our faculty and staff did a great job presenting the ways Assumption provides not only a great education, but also enhances social development.  Eric Ries did an excellent job presenting on the transition from the grade school to high school.  Since I frequently boast about the benefits of being a part of the Assumption Family, it was great to hear our other administrators delivering the same strong message to our future parents and students.

Finally, we spent some time this week working on a new development campaign for AHS.  We are still in the initial planning phases of this process, so more on that to come!

Have a great weekend!