St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School has been working with the University of Notre Dame to develop a new curriculum to meet new national standards.
Sister Mary Ann Tupy, the school’s principal, said Notre Dame would be helping the school and others in the Jackson diocese for two years as part of the ACE Collaborative for Academic Excellence.
Tupy was one of a number of principals and teachers who met in Jackson in June to work on the first outline of the curriculum. This time they focused on math, and other subjects will be addressed later.
“We had a very profitable week, and we had to create what we consider to be basic goals of what we wanted students to accomplish,” Tupy said.
Teachers from throughout the diocese will review the outline during the school year and give their input, and more meetings will be held.
Tupy said the uniform standards put all the schools on the same page, which she believes is important for the diocese.
She said those in the group in Jackson got high marks from the representatives of Notre Dame for the work they had done.
“They were very proud of us,” she said.
St. Francis also now has an advisory board, made up of people from Greenwood and elsewhere, that is working on a development program and a strategic plan for the school.
It costs about $7,000 a year to educate a student, and tuition is only $2,400, said the Rev. Greg Plata, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church. About 70 percent of the students are receiving tuition assistance.
The donor base also has been shrinking, and so they need to find more sources, Plata said.
“We’re at a critical point in our history,” he said. “And we know that the funding is going to have to come from outside of Greenwood.”
Plata said he wanted the advisory board to include people from the business world who know about development and outreach. Members toured the area and learned about the school’s history.
“They were impressed with the work that the Franciscans were doing here,” he said. “And also we had some of our children give a presentation, and they were very impressed.”
The board has met via teleconference once a month. Its main task so far has been to identify the school’s needs and suggest possible funding sources.
An architect is developing a comprehensive plan for the school, and Plata also is working with someone from Milwaukee on a video that he hopes will be put online. The strategic plan is the next step.
“All the pieces are slowly coming together,” he said.
If the money can be raised, he would like to add an outreach center that would include a gym, a computer lab, a library and meeting rooms — ideally, within the next three years.
The school’s emphases will be still be academics, discipline and faith, and they hope to be able to add facilities to supplement their efforts, Plata said.
“The tuition that we charge is so small compared to what other private institutions and parochial schools charge,” he said. “And I just shake my head as to why you wouldn’t want to send your kid to St. Francis.”
Classes start Aug. 9. There will be an orientation from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 8, during which parents and students will be able to drop off supplies, meet teachers and get packets of information from the staff.
• Contact David Monroe at 581-7236 or dmonroe@gwcommonwealth.com.
