February, 2010

 

The pastors whose parishes support Bishop Neumann and St. Wenceslaus have met to look over the budgetary requirements for next school year 2010-2011!  Of course on everyone’s mind is how much will the budget go up in these economically challenging times.  I wish I knew.  As we have tried to explain over the past few years is that as our costs keep going up, we try to keep tuition and fees as affordable as we can for our students and families.   This year, of course, we will try to give our teachers and staff some kind of incremental raise in salary.  We have to.  Our teacher industry is unlike most.  Our public school counterparts have public monies available to shift around to make sure that they can increase salaries for their teachers and adjust other areas of spending.  Unfortunately, as you know, our funding comes completely from private sources.  We are completely dependent on people who give through their Sunday tithing and through private donations to our school and those who make contributions through our fundraising efforts.  For the past 100 year in Saunders County we have been blessed with generous people who know the value of a Catholic School Education.  

Fortunately, we have always been able to depend upon the generosity of the People of God to help us with our mission to teach.  I believe this will continue. However, over the past year, we have only seen a slight recovery in the economy and the earnings for many families and businesses.  So far (I can only speak for St. Wenceslaus Parish) we have been blessed with the generosity of the People of God continuing to be good.  Even in these bad times (low interest, swamped markets), I see people making sacrifices where they can to help with the parish and schools.  I also know that there have been incredible sacrifices made to help us meet the $250,000 matching gift made to our schools for the future funding of teachers salaries. By April 25^th we hope to have this matching campaign complete, so to claim the entire $250,000 gift.   I pray this will continue, but I (we all) must be prudent in how we advance through our planning for next year

            At St Wenceslaus, our Leadership Team met to finish the final phase of collecting nearly 300 remaining households who have not made a gift or pledge to the campaign thus far.  The over all campaign sits at nearly 75%.  St. Wenceslaus Parish is at the same level of completion and participation.  Every pastor participating in the Meeting the Catholic Challenge Capital Campaign has commitment himself to doing the best they can to meet their parish goals.

            I think many of our families are making sacrificial gifts to the school through their tithing, but some are not doing what they can—not because they can’t; but because they are willing to let others do it for them.  We need to continue to encourage our families to do what they can to get to help the parish and schools in all ways possible.  There are some hard-ship cases, but some families do not make supporting the school enterprise a priority.  That is not fair.  We are going to need help from everyone to the best of their ability during these times to make sure we can continue to move forward with our educational efforts in all areas.  Please consider e-tithing if you are not already doing so.  This really helps with the cash flow of the parish and the school.  May God Bless you and our work!