Weekly Update 8/31/12

Many of you probably saw the articles in the Des Moines Register over the last week about bus safety.  It appears from the article that many schools have been cited for various infractions and their buses remain in service.  It also appears that some schools don’t inspect the Suburbans or vans they use to transport athletes to and from games.  I think this creates a perfect opportunity for us to address the process we, at Assumption, use to make sure all of our vehicles are in a suitable state to transport our students.  Currently we have three buses and three Suburbans.  All of these vehicles are inspected every six months by the State to ensure that they are in proper working order.  Prior to these inspections, we have our transportation director and an independent mechanic go through the checklist the State uses and make any repairs needed. When our vehicles are inspected and there is a concern from the state we immediately pull our vehicle out of rotation until it can be fixed.  While some districts don’t have vans or SUVs inspected, we do this to insure that all the students we transport are safe.

I had a great opportunity on Wednesday to speak to all the attendees at the Fr. Martin Golf Outing Dinner.  One thing I made sure to state is the importance of this group’s generosity to the families of Scott County.  In just the past year, the Fr. Martin fund has helped 31 students with tuition when their family was faced with economic struggle.  To put this in perspective, the enrollment increase for our Scott Co. schools this year was 26 students.  Without the Fr. Martin fund 31 students could have ended up leaving due to financial struggles.  We then could have seen an enrollment decrease.  Thank goodness for this group’s generosity!

With the long holiday weekend ahead of us it seemed like the week was packed with meetings and email communications.  Issues addressed included:

1.      504 plans and their implications

2.      Discussion of enrollment and subsidy data and what that data indicates for the future of our local schools

3.      Effectiveness of our donor giving program and ways to improve on current practices.

4.      Information needed for our Theater program to apply for a grant

5.      Clarification of athletic procedures and consistency between the school and athletics

6.      Approval of several items for purchase including a new walk-in cooler for our kitchen, new chairs for our choir room and a couple of technology needs

On the facilities side of things, we will be replacing one of our heat pumps in the boiler room.  This heat pump controls the heat to the gym and I really doubt that our winter coaches would enjoy practicing in a gym with no heat. 

The new room in the daycare is done and looks great!  Thanks to Eric Leuth for all of his hard work in getting this project done ASAP.  Kids should be running around the room early next week after all the toys are moved into the room.

Eric is also putting the finishing touches on the individual study rooms in the new tech lab.  We are looking to have the room painted and tables in next week.  This will be a tremendous facelift for this room.

All of the student laptops for the juniors and seniors are imaged, meaning they have all of the programs they need loaded onto them.  We are installing the extra memory in each of the 230 computers.  This should make the computers ready to handout next week.  Prior to handing out computers we will be holding mandatory student and parent meetings to go over all the details that need to be communicated to help make this educational initiative successful.  Meetings are tentatively scheduled for the 9^th and 10^th of September and we will be communicating the exact dates very soon.   This is an exciting thing for Assumption as an educational institution, but also comes with the need for proper rollout of the technology.  We are working to make sure this initiative goes well.

Have a great long weekend and enjoy the time with family and friends!