June 12, 2020
Hello St. Joseph families and supporters and welcome to our 2020 summer series of TWAS (This week at St. Joe’s).
As the summer begins at St. Joseph School, it is a crazy time of finishing up year-end reports as well as starting preparations for the next year.
This week, our Summer Saints program spent their 2nd week together. We are running three classrooms this summer: A toddler room and two rooms for K-5 students. We consider each room a “Pod” and they stay independent of themselves. By all accounts, everything is going very well. The teachers and students are enjoying themselves and it is great to hear their voices in the building. A benefit of the program is it allows us an opportunity to put precautions in place with small numbers of students and families so we can see how they are working for all.
On Monday of this past week, our new School Board officially met for the 2nd time, again via Zoom.
As a reminder, the school board is made up of 10 members and 5 committees.
- Executive committee:
- Fr. Stan Mader (pastor)
- Bruce Richards (principal)
- Kerry Stukenborg (Board chair – current parent)
- Peg Philp (Board vice chair – alum parent and alum faculty member)
- Danielle Hedlof (Board secretary – parishioner)
- Finance Committee chair: Mark McMullen (parishioner)
- Development Committee chairs: Tom Battis (alum parent) and Jeff Kaczrowski (current parent)
- Enrollment committee chair: Jill Flood (SJS alum and current parent)
- Facilities Committee chair: Deacon Jim Bauhs (our parish deacon)
Our committee chairs are looking for people to join their committees to help move the school along in each of the specified categories. If you or someone you know has the capacity to serve on one of these committees and you or they are interested in serving, please contact me and I will forward your name to the chairperson. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the start-up of each committee as well as ideas around the start for next fall and what that could look like. Watch for a series of videos this summer sharing these details.
I am happy to let you know that we have put some of our Gala dollars to use already. We have replaced our aging teacher computers with new laptop machines. The teachers are eager to have some new technology at their fingertips as they prepare for next year and the good news is that these machines will soon be in their hands. We also purchased 40 Lenovo Touchpads – (devices similar to iPads) for our elementary students to use. These will replace most of the aging iPads we had in the building.
We were able to capitalize on five $6,000 scholarships ($30,000 total) from St. Kate’s and three of our teachers have started working on their STEM certificates and two others hope to start next fall – Gala funds will help these teachers complete these certificates over the next 18 months or so.
On Thursday evening, we hosted our 8th grade graduation in the school parking lot. It was a magnificent event on a beautiful evening. Our graduates are now officially off to high school and we wish them the absolute best as they take their next steps towards heaven, this time away from the halls of St. Joseph.
Staffing News: With mixed emotion, Mrs. Mollie Olsen has announced her resignation as the Art Teacher at St. Joseph School. Mrs. Olsen has been with St. Joe’s 10+ years and she has blessed our school and our students with amazing work over that period of time. We are so very grateful for her love of all students, families and colleagues and the sharing of her many talents. She will be greatly missed.
Next week, we will publish and share our Annual Report. Watch for that and for upcoming editions of TWAS throughout the summer.
Have a blessed weekend!
