State of the Parish and School Report – Hopefully you’ve seen our Annual State of the Parish and School Report which covers the period of July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013. It was published a few weeks ago and copies of it are still available in the Church. For those of you who missed it, here’s a brief synopsis of it. It’s our attempt to be transparent with you so you know how the parish and school are doing.
The report covers the ministry side of our mission, our finances, as well as our facilities report. Working with the Parish Advisory Board, we’ve identified 5 areas to improve in our Strategic Plan. They are: Spirituality, Stewardship, Leadership, Service and Hospitality. The report shows ways that we’ve attempted to help our parish grow spiritually by increasing our Religious Education to non-Catholic school students and celebrating our Year of Faith with guest speakers and faith sharing book clubs. We expanded our Service project to allow adults and teens to serve the community through Habitat for Humanity and building a garden at Catholic Charities’ Center on Treasure Island that serves low income residents. Fr. Mike and I have also expanded our service to the community beyond Juvenile Hall, to homicide victims in San Francisco, holding prayer services for the victims and their loved ones.
Financially, through your support, you helped turn a deficit of $26.9K from previous year to a gain of $21.7K last year. I want to THANK YOU for responding to my appeal. Because from 2009-2012, we had a 25% loss in the Sunday collection. Through the appeal, you not only halted the downward trend, but increased the Sunday collection by 10%. Although a gain of $21.7K seems like a lot, however, to give you an example, when the school boiler broke down a couple of years ago causing a mini-flood, it took about $50K to replace it. So it’s good that we do put money aside for those “rainy” days. We were also fortunate, as the report showed, to have a generous bequest left for the parish for 2 consecutive years. In 2011 was $41.6K and last year was $238.8K. The finance committee suggested we set that money aside, with any money left over from the Capital Campaign, and put that into a Building/Maintenance Endowment Fund, where only the interest from the fund will be used and not the capital itself. This will ensure that we will always have funds for the maintenance of our facilities to serve the mission of the Church and the Gospel.
The School also did very well in her mission. In our accreditation review last year, by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and the Western Catholic Educational Association (WCEA), they gave our school the highest possible rating. I want to acknowledge Mrs. Carol Grewal, our principal, her faculty and staff for their hard work. The visiting committee commended the school and parish for creating a community where “everyone is striving to provide a Catholic environment, where quality education is a priority, and where students are filled with the spirit of enthusiasm for learning.” Our school counselor, Dr. Laura Nusbaum, has been teaching the Second Step curriculum to grades K-5, to help them develop social and emotional skills for social and academic success. In addition, Spanish is part of our regular curriculum in grades 1-8 and besides sports, band and guitar classes are also offered after school.
Financially, our school also ended the year well. Without the fundraising activities and your support, the school would operate at a loss of about $173K. But with your help, the Mother’s Club success and grants, it put the school at a gain of $248.6K. This enables the school to continually keep up with the pace of technology for our students, update the Science classrooms and bathrooms, as well as consider how to expand the Kindergarten program into a full day program. Currently, it’s a half-day program. This gain also helps us to keep tuition cost down. The current tuition is $6K per student per year, but the actual cost to educate each child is $7,750. So, thank you for your support to our parish and school. We hope that you find through this report, that along with the staff and the Finance Committee, we are trying to be good stewards of the gifts you’ve entrusted to us.
Peace,
Fr. Dan
