Updates for the Week 1/25/13

The Board meeting was held on Tuesday and items discussed included 300-400 policies, facilities plans, Catholic Schools Week, and upcoming events.

·   On Monday we dealt with some heating issues due to a boiler failure on Sunday that for some reason did not trigger the alarm.  At one point it was less than 50 degrees in several spots in the building.  Luckily, we were able to restore heat and it was a comfortable 72 degrees in the building by Tuesday.  We have a technician coming next week to replace a valve that should prevent this from happening in the near future. 

·   The internet has been a source of frustration for both students and teachers over the last few weeks.  While all of our equipment has functioned perfectly the last two weeks, unfortunately the AEA (our internet provider) made some security changes that has caused our outages.  We hope that these problems will cease and we can get back to business as usual.

·   We completed our winter State reporting this week.  We are certainly glad to be done with this process until it comes up again in the spring, as it takes a lot of time and effort.

·   We held a productive Marketing meeting on Thursday.  Some of the things we are working on in the development area.  Liz has been hard at work on the Focus Newsletter which should go out within the next few weeks.   Jordan is working on several alumni initiatives, one of which is an alumni newsletter.  There is tremendous potential for this to grow into some great things, and we will be asking for your help with this in the future. 

Have a great weekend!

Updates for the Week 1/18/2013

·        Our Board meeting will be on Tuesday next week due to Martin Luther King Day.  Items to be discussed include the revision of 300 and 400 series policies, update on the facilities plan, and review of the annual audit.

·        The Scott County Catholic School Advisory Board met on Monday.  Discussion items included:  MVSTO, Embracing our Future, the Governor’s plan on education, marketing plan for Catholic Schools Week, Career Day,  Math, Catholic Schools Week Mass,  school safety, and ways to partner to help schools in need of support.

·        Congrats to Joe Barrer and the boys basketball team on their win over Alleman Tuesday night.  Joe has worked hard to renew this friendly rivalry with Alleman, and has created a great opportunity for our student athletes for many years to come.  I was honored to be asked to accept the trophy for our student athletes after the Knights victory.

·        State reporting continues with the editing of our JMC data to comply with State requirements.  On a side note, we are exploring the potential to move to a different student information system in the future.  We currently are using JMC, but have been dealing with some issues that remain unresolved, so it is time to explore some other options.

·        One of the biggest challenges with technology is when it doesn’t work. We dealt with some of these challenges this week while the AEA made some adjustment to their system.  From what I have been told, these changes have not been as seamless as expected, and we have dealt with internet slowdowns and outages throughout the week which brought on some phone issues at Assumption.  Hopefully next week will see these issues resolved.

·        Looking forward to technology for next year, we have begun to review the implementation of the 1:1 laptop program.  After reviewing the positive feedback and the perceived challenges of the programs, we will decide if expanding the program is a good plan.

·        The EOF campaign continues, and I had an interesting meeting on Friday which could prove very fruitful for student assistance in Scott County.  I will be preparing a grant this weekend to apply for funds to aid our students through Embracing Our Future.   

Update for the Week 1/11/2013

I hope that everyone had an enjoyable holiday break!  While everyone at AHS had a chance to be with family and get a little rest and relaxation, we were still hard at work to keep things moving forward as we moved into the New Year.  I’ll include an update from the Christmas break along with the first week back of school.  

The policy committee began review of the 300-400 series policies.  We are hoping to present our recommendations to the board at our January 22^nd meeting.

The Mississippi Valley STO board held its annual meeting at Crow Valley.  Thanks to the hard work of Liz King and Linda Duffy, we once again met the cap of our STO, and even had to send back some donations.  While it never feels good to turn away donors, it is great that the STO was once again able to meet our cap. Bridget and I met with Elisha Kubalsky (who previously taught at Assumption) over break to discuss a long term subbing opportunity for second semester.  Elisha has lived in India for the last two years because of her husband’s employment, but they will be moving back to the area soon.    It will be great to have her back working with our students! 

State reporting time is once again upon us.  I worked on this process quite a bit over break and it is much easier after going through the process at the beginning of the year.  State reporting is time consuming, but I believe that we should be able to cut the amount by about half when compared with the beginning of the year.

I attended the AEA superintendents meeting over break where we heard a presentation from the Department of Education about Response to Intervention, and the initiatives proposed for the upcoming legislative session.  

We continue to work on the marketing campaign for Catholic Schools Week.  Thanks to Steve Grubbs, we have some really neat ideas on different approaches we can take.  More to come on that!  We will also be partnering with Bethany Home on a dodgeball for Diapers project.  This will be a lot of fun for all of our K-12 students, and a great way to provide a service to the community.  

We held out Scott County administrators meeting and discussion items included tuition Bethany CSW project, CSW mass, math, school safety and AHS choir teacher visits.

On Monday, I presented to the teachers a new endowed award that will celebrate the great teachers we have at Assumption.  The Edward J. and Helen T. Lammers Teacher Excellence Award is an annual award was established in 2012 as an ongoing tribute to the memory of Ed and Helen Lammers.  Ed and Helen were life-long advocates of education in general and Catholic education in particular. They raised eight children in Davenport, all of whom attended Catholic grade and high school, and later attended Catholic universities.  What a great award for Assumption High School and our great educators!

In Development we have been working on a couple different projects.  The first of is the Focus newsletter, which will highlight the great things happening on all of our local Catholic Schools which should be mailed during Catholic Schools Week.  Second, in an attempt to reconnect with past parents and alumni, Jordan Gizzarelli (our new Alumni Relations Coordinator) is working on an alumni newsletter.