St. Andrew Apostle Advisory Board
Meeting minutes
Thursday, February 7, 2008
St. Andrew Apostle Advisory Board
Members Present: John Vittone, Kathy Kilty, Msgr. Mellone, Andrew Price, Robin Tomaselli, Angela Solomon, Andrea Morgan, Curtis McKay, Dot Primrose, Mary Ahearn, Nori Limarzi, and Dustin Watson
Members absent: Mary Tull, Peggy Mazzola, Tim Breen, Tara Roche
Guest: Lisa Stacy
Meeting was called to order at 7:12 PM.
Recorders: Dorothy Primrose and Angie Morgan
Opening Prayer: Fr. Mellone quoted from Blessed Mother Theresa from “Not Ashamed of God’s Word.”
OLD BUSINESS:
Approval of January minutes: with the two changes they are approved by a majority vote of the members present.
NEW BUSINESS:
Tickets for Papal mass are available. Parishes will be awarded tickets according to their population and are to distribute them accordingly. We are awaiting our allotment. A lottery system was suggested for interested persons in our parish. People should submit their names if they are interested in attending mass, and then the names are drawn randomly. High schools are going to be given extra tickets due to their interest in attending the mass. The mass will be April 17th at the new National’s stadium.
Parish Center Update: brochures were distributed of the previous architectural plans that were established. The original plan was to raise 1.5 million and pay 1.5 million for the phase of the project that included the elementary school wing; the debt is now paid in full. Initially 1.5 million was not raised so the Parish paid more than expected. The architectural renderings are not accompanied by plans, which are needed to begin construction. This project would be completed in phases; the current estimated cost is about 6 million to build the Parish Life Center. The social center would be on the ground floor and the gymnasium would be on the top floor. The construction project will be completed in 1 year but fundraising efforts will take at least three years. In order to proceed we would need to get permissions from the Archdiocese. First Capital Campaign (in 2000) and Forward in Faith Campaign ended in 2005. This was a three-year plan that went over by two years, thus it was 5 years in length. The entire parish must be involved and not just the school families; would need approx $4,000 per family. Depending on the cost of the project we might have to request $6,000 per family. Persons with engineering and financial management background would be ideal to have on the feasibility study committee. Phases and options were discussed and about forming a committee to explore this topic further.
The Open house was well attended; enrollment in the Tuesday, Thursday preschool is already full; the other preschool class is also full; and KG enrollment looks promising.
Mission and Belief statement was distributed from Peggy and the group that is working on the Mission Statement. A packet was distributed and there were 3 versions of the mission statement, members were asked to vote for the one version they liked the best and return them to Peggy by Feb 8th.
For the Middle States Accreditation study, committees were formed for each area and have been working on various aspects of the study.
The Diversity Committee that was proposed by Tim Breen sent a prospectus from the ADL (Anti-Defamation League). This needs to be looked at by Fr. Mike and Kathy to see if this is the direction in which we should proceed. Also Robin or Angie will contact the woman from Good Counsel to discuss that school’s committee.
Nominations Committee: We will be recruiting 3 new members for next year. We need an announcement placed in Thursday notes and the Church bulletin to recruit possible members. The committee is made up of Tara, Dustin and Nori, with Dustin as the chair.
School board survey will be completed on either Zoomerang or Survey Monkey. For both of these companies the responses are free. The school community study will look at the following subgroups: faith ethnicity, mileage range that people drive to school, family size, learning differences, ESOL, educational background of family, and occupational background. The Communications Committee met and wanted to use this same site and survey but the problem was with how to deal with anonymity of the responses. There is a list of categories that was circulated to look at things that are important for the parental gift and talent survey. The responses will be by e-mail with some type of reward for responses from families of a tag day, pizza day, etc. for the students. The target date to get the Community study completed for the Middle States report is April 1, 2008. This will give the committee enough time to write the report for the school. The entire Middle States document needs to be at the office 6 weeks prior to site visit. Committee forming and the following school board members will be a part of the teacher committee; Mary Ahearn, Robin Tomaselli, Angie Morgan, and Dot Primrose. The teachers on the committee are Mr. Price, Mrs. Sheehan, and Mrs. Stacy.
There was a conference call of the committee that rehash of new plans and how to make impact. There will be more PKS golf tournament involvement of school board members and not just Nick Luketic’s running the golf committee. Also we need to raise larger sums of funds and target where the funds are to be allocated. The committee may also want to focus on bringing external money into the school (i.e. grants)
Angie and Robin presented for her. The committee will meet on Monday next week. Career day is coming up on April 28th. The forms to reserve a spot will be placed in Thursday notes in the next few weeks. There were a fair number of alumni judges for the science fair. There is a class reunion for the class of 1996 that is scheduled for February 2008.
The survey was the major issue and that was presented during Mrs. Stacy’s presentation. The same survey website will be used for both surveys, but they will go out as separate documents.
The committee will meet soon. The new school brochures were presented and look GREAT!
Peggy went to class for Assistant Principals on Supervisors Curriculum Development class; reimbursement moved, seconded, approved for the amount of $349.
Tim Moran; Notre Dame Spring course Elementary Reading Materials; moved seconded and approved for the amount of $784.
Gretchen Hochhausler; requesting reimbursement- no forms submitted prior to the class. The amount of the class is $784. The School Board decided to approve this request, but to let teachers know that in the future classes will not typically be reimbursed retroactively.
We need to define the amount of money that has been utilized from the account this year.
Happy Birthday wishes to Fr. Mike
Closing Prayer was done by Nori Limarzi.
Angie Morgan adjourned the meeting at 9:05PM