Home & School Meeting Thursday, December 10, 2015 St. Kilian School Library In attendance: Danny Dulak President, Dan Kulak Vice President, Pat Drinan Treasurer, Sara Cummings Secretary; Principal Hamilton, Molly Dallman, Dan Leischer, Stacy Walter, Kim Wiedmeyer, Father David 1. PRINCIPAL REPORT - The Dove s chocolate sale organized by Mrs. Boyd raised $50 to be put toward the Library remodeling project. - Mr. Hamilton will be soon presenting the Accreditation Report to the School Committee. There is a check list of over 150 items of which the school had 18 or so to work on. Some of those items have already been taken care of. There was not any one area of major concern from this Accreditation Study, but small areas to improve upon by all teachers, leaders, committees. Overall, Mr. Hamilton was pleased with the report. Mr. Hamilton will have to respond to the Arch by June 1 st on how the school has met or will meet the goals as set by this report. - Applications for the Principal position have started to come in. A Committee has been formed to review the applicants and set an interview schedule. 2. TREASURER S REPORT - No written report was available, but Pat guaranteed one by the next meeting. - A verbal report was given - $54,137 in the checking account and $5,036.10 in the money market account. The checking account balance shows a $7,000 increase since the end of September. This includes $1,000 donation from the Knights of Columbus, $2,000 from US Bank Foundation $300 from Einstein Grant for 2 microphones, $80 donation to the Library Project, $351 from the Mall Fundraiser, $350 from Soles for Education. 3. FUNDRAISING REVIEWS - COOKIE WALK SAVANNA FEER o Bake Day was held. Donation of cookies is still needed. o Marilyn Kaminski is running the raffle. o Signs going up to advertise this event. - COMMUNITY MARKETS o The first order had $100 in profit with 12 participants. o In discussion with Bob Jewell, Dan Kulak said that he felt that Bob and his partner have a good business plan and the potential to replace 50% of what Market Day had raised previously. o The pick up process went very smooth. 4. CLUB/ACTIIVTY UPDATES - CHRISTMAS PARADE STACY WALTERS o This was Stacy s last year heading up the float for the Hartford Christmas Parade. o Stacy has this very well organized and any new lead should find it easy to step into the role. o Stacy commented that some of the work involved included emailing teachers to help get students to be on the float and to walk along and hand out candy. o Stacy also said that getting the candy is the hardest part as the Halloween candy is gone by the time the parade is held. o When questioned about where the trailer comes from, Stacy said a trailer was donated years ago and the Ohm family graciously stores it on their property.
- CHESS CLUB MARILYN KAMINSKI o Marilyn was unable to make the meeting, but Danny Dulak reported for her. o The HS hosts the Chess Club, inviting 5-8 graders from the area schools to also participate. o No money is needed from Home & School. Last year, money was requested to share a bus with Rossman school to transport kids to the HS after school. However, this year there are only 5 students and the families have worked out a car-pooling schedule. - ROBOTIC LEAGUE MARY FRITZ o Mary was unable to attend but emailed Sara with some updates. o The team finished 29 th out of 36 th at the Regional Competition. Mary commented that the kids had difficulty during the robot game. o Mary is very proud of them all! 5. PARISH REQUEST FOR $20,000 - A recent audit of the congregation s finances showed that the church s support for the school is way out of wack according to Father David. The goal is to have the church s support down to only 40% of the school s budget. - Father David said that there were two ways to lessen the Church s support of the school fundraising and recruitment/retention of students. Father David heavily stressed that fundraising was the very most important, with retention/recruitment secondary. - To help with the school s deficit, the Athletic Committee and Home & School Committee were informed, back in May by the Finance Committee, that together, the Committees would need to give to the congregation $20,000. The Athletic Committee has given the congregation $4,500. - Father David emphasized that this money being requested is for tuition assistance to lessen the burden the school has on the entire congregation. He said the cost to run the school per student was $6,000. - In lieu of raising tuition, which Father David is strongly opposed to doing, the Home & School Board was directed to fundraise more as the $20,000 was only the first step. - Sara Cummings questioned whether it was feasible to expect a small percentage of congregation families the families in the school - to continue to work endlessly to raise money. She commented that there is a burn out factor with school families with all the different fundraising activities already being held by the school. - Mr. Hamilton stressed the best way to reach budget goals was for both the church and the school to work together as a congregation. To pull resources, time and effort and not be in constant conflict. He commented that he knew of a few families that have left the school because there was not a cohesive working congregation but a school and a church often at odds with each other. - To help with future planning of the Home & School budget including being able to maintain the activities the fundraising efforts of the school families already support, at the October meeting, the Home & School Board approved the recommendation that $15,500 be given to the congregation as requested for 2015-2016 and that it be recorded as income on the School s financial report. In subsequent years, the Home & School Association would retain enough fundraised monies to cover the approved annual Home & School expenses (currently funded at a level $20,500 for the current year). Any remaining fundraised revenue, the Home & School Association would retain 60% to be used for school related projects/expenditures as voted on by the Home & School Board, and 40% be given to the congregation, to be recorded as income on the school s financial report. - This recommendation was given to Lynn Doll, School Committee President, to share with the Finance Committee. Per verbal agreement with Lynn Doll, the Finance Committee approved the proposal. - Shortly thereafter, the proposal was amended by Lynn Doll, with approval by Dan Dulak, based on a request from Father David in early December to include: The Home & School Association agrees to continue to seek endorsement from the Parish Finance committee and the Building and Ground committee (where necessary) for any expenditures over $1500 on items outside the Home and School
Association s normal operating budget. For the current school year these items include items such as Library renovation, Science lab renovation and keyboards for music class. - At the Home & School Committee, Father David also said the proposal was accepted once at the beginning of the discussion and again during the discussion. When asked if it there was a signed acceptance, Father David explained that the Church does not sign such things. - Dan Kulak asked Father again if they were accepting the proposal and he said yes. Dan commented that he was confused and asked for clarification because the proposal stated subsequent years yet Father mentioned the $20,000 was only a starting point. By saying that the $20,000 is a starting point Dan said that it did not sound like the proposal, as written, was being accepted. Father then said they are just accepting the $20,000 and nothing else in the proposal. - Dan Kulak questioned Father as to what business plan was in place to help keep pace with the growing expenses of running the school. Specifically, if there were any short term and long term financial plans for tuition increases as well as requests of fundraised money from the Athletic Committee and Home & School Committee, especially so both Committee can plan their own budgets. Father David said there was not. - Considering there really is no authority the Home & School has over their fundraised money, there was not much more discussion other than to direct Pat to write a check to the church for $15,500. 6. TOP 5 NEEDS LIST BUDGET UPDATE - KEYBOARDS FOR MUSIC SARA o $1,000 from the Dinner Auction has been designated for new music keyboards o Sara was unclear what if anything she was responsible for regarding the Top 5 List. She will contact Mr. Zastrow and ask him to submit a proposal. - SCIENCE LAB DANNY o $4,000 has been donated to this project by a private donor and $4,000 has been designated by the Dinner Auction Committee for this project. o This project has been on hold as the logistics of where the science lab and art studio were to be housed in the school was worked on. o Mr. Hamilton commented that staff was not in favor of changing art to Art on a Cart. Instead, the library work space, with the renovations being headed by Ms. Dallman, will also service as the art room, leaving the current combo art/science room for just science. o Danny will work to finalize numbers with Ms. Biersack. This will include meeting with Kevin Gehring to get the cost of running electric to the work tables. - PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT SARA o This $30,000 to $40,000 project is benched as a long-term project. - RISERS SARA o The Dinner Auction Committee has designated $1,500 of their fundraising profits for this. o Mrs. Rhinehart and Mr. Zaffro and Father Davic are discussing and researching riser design that will best meet everyone s needs. - TABLES & CHAIRS DAN o Dan has reached out to three different companies and has found the first company he started with still has the best prices. o Steal Folding Chairs are $23.50 each and an 8 x 30 table is $115 each. Freight is $400.
7. LIBRARY PROJECT - Molly Dallman and Dan Leischer were in attendance to give a report on the Library Project renovation. - Molly currently has $5,000 for this project from the Trivia Night fundraiser. - This project hit a snag when it was discovered that the tile under the carpet contains asbestos. Fear is that when the carpet is pulled up, it may also pull up the tile and expose the asbestos. - The removal of asbestos has a lot of fixed cost, so should anything be done in the work area of the library, it would make economic sense to do the entire library. - Sara questioned if the asbestos removal should become an item on the building maintenance project list as at some point the school would have to replace the old, worn carpeting. - Another additional cost that was not originally anticipated was acoustical issues. With the plan that the work area of the library would be used for art class, carpet may be difficult to keep clean. However, with the spancrete ceiling, hard floors will create an acoustical nightmare. Acoustical tiles could be place on the ceiling, however, that will add cost to the project. - Molly had anticipated doing this project in three phases. o Phase 1 includes: Countertops $3,700 Paint $140 Check out desk $450 Chairs $2340 Whiteboard $460 Bulletin board $300 o Phase 2 includes: Lighting/ceiling $7,000 Rolling wall $1,739 o Phase 3 includes: Flooring $5,600 Asbestos removal $6,000 Computer Lab $6,000 Tables $3,294 Shelves $3,430 (Dan Leischer had found some tall cabinets in storage that Molly had claimed for additional storage space to be used for art supplies, Robotics and After School Learning Program.) - Despite Molly s three phase plan, she is having difficulty in deciding how to best use the library space from how to place the book shelves to what to do with the quiet area on the south end of the library and also deciding if a divider wall would be beneficial for the space. - The Home and School Committee felt a good resource for Molly to use to answer many of her questions was Ralph Schellinger. - Dan Kulak agreed to be on the Library Renovation Committee that includes Molly, Dan Leischer and now Dan Kulak. - The goal of this Committee is to have a good working diagram of how the space will be used/set up as well as true cost to do the work by the January Home & School Meeting. 8. PARKING REGULATION CHANGE PROPOSAL - Danny Dulak has contacted the City about designating the street area in front of the Library as a 15-minute loading and unloading zone from 3:30-5:30 PM on school days. The City said they would review the request.
9. CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WEEK - Volunteers will be needed to give tours during Catholic Schools Week which is at the end of January. Meeting adjourned at 8:40 PM