November 2, 2016

Time: 4:00 pm
Place: St. Patrick’s Co-Cathedral Conference Room

Present: Ken Frazier, Chair
Karen Fagg, Vice Chair
Reverend Steve Zabrocki, Parish Representative
Carlos Arce
Leo O’Brien
Mary Susan Fishbaugh
Ashley Harada
Brian McGovern
Brittney Souza
A. J. Miller
Shaun Harrington, BCS President
Jan Haider, Foundation President
Kaitlin Overton
Shel Hanser, Principal BCCHS

Opening
Prayer: Ashley

Approval of
Minutes: Vote: Brian made a motion to approve the minutes from October 19, 2016. A.J. seconded the motion. Motion carried unanimously.

Foundation
Update: Capital Campaign Update: Last Friday the K-8 Students had their first “Furniture Friday”. Students had the option of bringing a donation to school and then they would not have to wear a uniform that day. The 3 schools collected over $1,500 with SFP earning $1,040 of the total. Furniture Friday will be held on the last Friday of each month through the remainder of the 2015-2016 school year. Their goal is to furnish a classroom which is $10,000.

Furniture samples have been delivered to each school for display during the Parent Teacher Conferences. Handouts are being given to the parents who want an opportunity to participate in the fundraising for St. Francis School. A person has already purchased the 82 music stands that were needed.

Teachers and staff toured the new building on October 21. They were very excited to see the new classrooms even though most of the areas were just framed in. It would be nice for the students to see the new school but it is not safe enough for a student tour. Shane Fairbanks will produce a virtual tour that the teachers will share with their students.

Annual Giving Campaign: The annual giving campaign requests were delayed. They will be sent out by the end of this week. The year-end appeal will be sent out to a select group in about 2 weeks.

Social/Print Media: There has been an average of 3 postings a week with notices on social media. The plan is to keep St. Francis School in the minds of the followers. There were 14 Facebook posts in October that reached between 1,000-2,500 individuals per week.

Currently there are 81 Twitter followers and there were postings 32 times in October. There were 2 campaign push emails in October that continue to feature alumni and prominent Catholic Schools’ individuals in the “Look Whose Happening” article. The last one featured Andrew Miron, class of 2006, who is very successful in the technology industry.

The Brockel’s Chocolate promotion will start on November 8th. A donation of 25 per cent of the proceeds will be donated to the St. Francis School. The sales will continue until the candy called “Nun Better”, which was created for by Brockel’s to support the school, is out of stock. Dan Burkhart wrote a feature article for “last best news” about Jaci Brockel who is a BCCHS alumnus and he is also asking the Billings Gazette to publish the article.

The Bishop will be touring the St. Francis School site on November 21st. Jan will notify the Board when she has a time for the tour if you would like to come along.
Business
Committee
Report: The committee met last night. There is a vacancy at the rental property so some updating will be needed because the tenant was there for 8 years. BCS has 2 rental properties; one is a single family home and the other is a duplex. The single family home is now vacant.

Another topic the committee discussed was the use of an e-rate consultant. Dulcey had one but Rita stopped using them. The plan is to reinstate the use of the consultant. The committee is working on a cash management policy and they hope to have it ready in a month.

The audit went well. The auditor asked if he could push the results back to beyond the filing date and BCS has not heard from him since. There is very little left to do on the audit Jerry just ran out of time.

The committee continues to work on the foreign student center and the technology issues.

Marketing
Enrollment
Report: No report was given.

Catholic
Culture
Committee: Karla Kelly led the proceedings for the CCC portion of PIR Day. Fr. Wayne and Fr. Jay assisted with the Q&A portion of the presentation. This process is to give teachers an opportunity to discuss their faith and the related questions that come up in class. Questions and resources have been posted on google drive for people to access. A directory that will help people know who to contact with faith related questions within their schools will be included in the CCC site on google drive.

The faculty was very involved in the process. The feeling is that the 45 minute session is too short because the staff would like more time with discussions. CCC members are very willing to participate in group discussions on faith and Catholicism. Transsexuality issues are now in the Supreme Court and the decision will have to be addressed by the schools.

President’s
Report: October PIR Days: Superintendent Uhl brought in guest speakers for PIR Day. The topics were the new religion standards, marketing the schools, and Superintendent from the Diocese of Kansas City, St. Joe’s talked about accommodating students with special needs. The superintendent has a son with Downs Syndrome so he spoke on handicapped children in Catholic education. He created the Fire Foundation which has donated $2.5 million in grants for both tuition and scholarships for faculty training to work with handicapped children in the classroom. The staff was very interested in how to work with the students and their parents.

On Friday, some BCS staff members held technology workshops for their peers. In the afternoon, the high school worked on accreditation and K-8 discussed the 3 into 1 school consolidation. It was a good opportunity for the staff to discuss fears, comfort level, and how to handle the stress of the change. The staff was told, “There are 2 things that have been decided and there is no discussion about it; we are building a new school and we are moving in August.

The teachers were fun to watch during the new school tour. They were taking “selfies” of themselves in the room they wanted. The teachers were told ahead of time which section belonged to each grade level. There were a lot of questions and they seemed to be a lot more comfortable about things after that day.

Technology Update: It is unknown how things will go with technology but should know more in the next week or so.

Parent / Teacher Conferences: The arrangement of the parent teacher conferences being held in the high school gym for Central and SFU has raised some concerns. It is hard to schedule all of the parents with all of the subjects. The new building will cause some changes and the K-8 conferences will be held at St. Francis and not at the high school. The parents were excited to see the furniture that is going in the new school.

Some major concerns with the way the conferences are conducted are privacy and length of conversations. Though sensitive conversations should be scheduled for a time other than the parent teacher conferences and there have been some preconference meetings held this year. Parents should be notified before conference time if there are delicate issues to be dealt with.

Principals’ Meetings: The Board likes the reports from the principals’ meetings.

Discussions have started with the principals and during the next week and a half Shaun is scheduled to meet with the St. Francis faculties to get their input on changes. They come up with things that have not been previously discussed. The sooner the staff concerns and frustrations are addressed the more comfortable they will be with the move and the more positive the information will be that is going out to the public.

There will be some planned parent discussions that will be done in each building. The students will also be involved at a later time. Shaun will get a schedule out to the Board as soon as he has it set up.

If the Board has questions or hear concerns about the building, please contact Shaun. The meetings with the parents will probably be set up before Christmas. There will be more than one session for each school. The 3 schools will be encouraged to bring some of their traditions with them.

Service / Professional Organizations: Shaun has a speaking engagement with the Rotary and requests at other groups for time on their agenda. The Board was asked to provide other contacts for speaking opportunities.

New Business: It is important for students to be involved with extra-curricular activities. BCCHS has a very high participation rate in activities this year.

There will be a demonstration at the next meeting on how the high school boiler operates. There are some minor issues. It was suggested that working with the boiler a while may solve those problems.

Adjournment: The meeting adjourned at 5:14 pm.