Weekly Update 1/10/2014

I hope that everyone had a refreshing Christmas and New Year!  I was able to get some much needed time with family, and participated in a little Christmas Eve day pheasant hunting with my brother-in-law. When we stepped out of the car the temperature gauge read a balmy – 15.  Hopefully you all made better decisions than that. 

While the school was pretty quiet due to the lack of student noise that certainly doesn’t mean that nothing was accomplished over break.  

The end of December becomes a very busy time on the STO side of the office.  By January 1^st we needed to raise $762,186.15 in order to “cap” the number of credits we are issued. Through the hard work of Linda and Liz we were able to do just that. This money will certainly benefit those needing help to attend our Scott County Catholic Schools.

Most of Christmas break was spent catching up on things that we had not yet been able to address on the buildings and grounds side. Little nagging maintenance things – fix this light here, replace that ceiling tile there – were able to be addressed while the school was free of the usual day to day activity. 

One project I personally needed to work on was state reporting. I am sure some of you cringe when you hear I am spending my time making ensure all our data is in proper order.  Don’t worry; I too cringe when I think of the monotonous task of completing what seems like one of our 10 state reports. Anyway our winter report is completed. Let the celebration begin!

The other project I worked on was certainly more fun and interesting. I spent some time over break collecting some information for the finance committee. If you remember our discussion from the last Board meeting, I was to research tuition data from the Catholic secondary schools in Iowa. While it took some time, it was a worthwhile process and I learned quite a bit about tuition models, rates, discounts and assistance. One of the cool things to look at is a comparison of tuition rates. Below is the info I found for the current year organized from highest to lowest with certified enrollment for each school:

	Tuition(supporting)	Tuition(non-supporting)	Non-Catholic	Certified Enrollment
Bishop Heelan	$7,446		$7,446	434
Dowling	$6,674		$9,332	1431
St. Albert	$6,180		$7,420	310
Wahlert	$5,400	$5,775	$6,600	479
Regina	$5,180	$7,730	$10,525	362
Xavier	$4,705		$8,375	706
Assumption	$4,695		$6,710	477
Waterloo Columbus	$4,540		$7,180	294
Burlington Notre Dame	$3,632		$5,578	200
Gehlan/Spalding	$3,600	$4,147	$4,499	217
St. Edmund	$3,565		$4,240	218
Prince of Peace	$3,390		$4,405	120
Beckman	$3,340			441
Kuemper	$3,325		$4,452	298
Don Bosco	$2,950		$4,425	143
Marquette	$2,480		$3,130	67
Bishop Garrigan	$2,415		$2,415	228
AVG	$4,320	$5,884	$6,041	377.9

The final project we worked on was revamping our purchase order system. I took a visit to a public school district, which in the last 5 year has centralized their PO process with great success. I need to do more research, but this is certainly something which may help to ease some of our concerns about purchase orders.  

Have a great weekend!

Andy