January 19, 2010

Dear St. Mary’s School Families,

I am writing to give you an update on where we stand with the Meitler study recommendations. As we told you previously, the St. Mary’s School Board put together a response to the recommendations, which we submitted to the Diocese just prior to Christmas. St. Mary’s Parish Council also reviewed the recommendations and put together a separate response, which was aligned with the School Board’s response.  Both responses were also aligned with the Diocesan recommendations (with a few suggestions for minor changes).

Unbeknownst to both the Council and the School Board, Fr. John put together a separate response with his own thoughts. We have just recently found out that his response was very different from our response. Fr. John recommended that we close the school, focus the mission on the poor in the parish, and reopen the school on a smaller scale with less financial risk.  We are saddened that Fr. John did not share his true thoughts and ideas so we could collaborate on a unified response.  We have been in contact with the Bishop’s office to let them know of our deep concern with this process and have asked to meet with the Bishop.  We would like a chance to figure out a solution that will benefit all. In addition, the School Board is meeting tonight with the Diocesan Chief Financial Officer to discuss this further.  We will follow-up with another communication after this meeting.  Like all of our School Board meetings, this meeting is open to parish and school families if you would like to attend.

As of right now, we don’t know what all this means for St. Mary’s School. The Bishop will review all recommendations this week, and we should have an answer by the end of this month as to how they would like us to proceed.  We are hoping that he will give us a chance to implement our proposed recommendations.

In the meantime, we are asking all of you to pray for our faculty, our students, and our parish/school families. It is important that we all stay positive and not lose our faith in this process. We need to keep moving forward and spreading the good news about our school. The School Board is committed to an open and transparent process.  I encourage you to reach out to any of the School Board members for additional discussion or questions.  You can contact me via email at mike.bullock@stmarywc.org or call me at 630-377-9817.

Sincerely,

Mike Bullock

School Board President