Friday, March 1, 2013

Weekly Update 3/1/2013



It seems like more time has been spent traveling back and forth from Des Moines this week than anything else, but what a great problem to have!  It continues tonight with a trip up to Des Moines to watch our girls’ basketball team compete for a third straight state championship.  Good luck ladies!

The trips don’t stop next week with another journey to Des Moines Tuesday as our boys compete in their first round game, and again to State Capitol on Wednesday for the Education Celebration, where students will speak with legislators about the benefits of Catholic education.  These certainly are busy times for Assumption parents, students, employees and supporters!

We received some questions regarding our decision to send a fan bus to the game last Tuesday with the potential for challenging weather.  I want to assure everyone that administration spent a significant amount of time discussing the pros and cons of both canceling and sending the fan buses, and in the end we agreed that sending a charter bus with an experienced driver who has a lot of was the best choice, and Bridget, Wade, and I were in constant contact with each other about the road conditions.  Luckily the weather behaved.  

The one problem we did run into had little to do with weather and everything to do with chance.  The bus carrying our band had radiator problems en route and was forced to stop.  We made the decision to have a bus from Iowa City take the students back to Davenport due to time constraints.  I am very sorry that our band didn’t get a chance to perform at the state tournament. 

We began the budget process and Carey has completed our initial estimates on revenue.  There are always many decisions to be made and tweaks to consider as we move through this essential process.  I look forward to discussing this at the next board meeting on March 25, 2013.

On the development side, the annual appeal is progressing well and we have been very pleased with the response.  Susie is exploring some ways to improve on the already successful April Knight celebration, and Liz and Susie will be attending a philanthropic planning conference next week to see if we can pick up any new ideas that might be applicable to our development process. 

I’ve been doing some research on school bus transportation in Iowa, which has turned up a lot of interesting information on best practices used to keep fleets running as well as vehicle purchasing plans.  One surprising fact is the average age of a school bus in Iowa is 12 years old.  For those of you who are interested, our buses were manufactured in 2004 and 2007.  When I talked to the state they said there is still one 1978 bus and a few 1979 buses still in operation in Iowa.

Hope to see all of you sometime this weekend whether it is in Des Moines or at the boys send off on Sunday.

Have a great weekend!

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