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.