As we close out a wonderful 2012/2013 school year, we would like to say thank you once again for sending your sons and daughters to Bishop Kelly.  It was truly an outstanding year in many ways and we would like to highlight a few things from the past month as we say goodbye to our incredible seniors and prepare to welcome a new freshman class and many transfers into our sophomore, junior and senior classes.

Commencement Exercises for the Class of 2013

• The 2013 Graduation, celebrating our 49^th graduating class from BK, took place on Saturday, May 25.  It was a huge success and a wonderful example of our BK Way culture alive and well.  Many people contributed to the special day, but thanks in particular to Scott Coulter for his leadership and organization, Chad Blue and team for how beautiful the school looked, Fr. Don Fraser for his homily at Baccalaureate Mass and his Invocation at the graduation, and Rita Franklin for her work on the program, reception and dedication to Fr. Riffle.  And in the end, most importantly, thanks to our great faculty and the incredible students of the Class of 2013, who showed all week what a terrific group they are!
• We had 14 Valedictorians and 2 Salutatorians in the Class of 2013.  The Valedictorians were Anthony Ames, Callen Falash, Clay Oliver, Emilee Horiuchi, Joseph Zepeda, Josephine Ngo, Kaitlin Marron, Katie, Martin, Katrina Estep, Mary Kate O’Toole, Megan Nicola, Morgan Mings, Reilly Coyle, and Therese Murphy.  The Salutatorians were Emily Major and Kendall Murie.  Mary Kate, Clay and Katrina gave inspiring and moving speeches at our Commencement.
• A couple of noteworthy statistics on this exceptional class:
  • 99% of the 142 graduates are going on to college, with the lone person not immediately going on serving a church mission and planning to go to college upon his return.
  • 82% of the graduates were offered merit-based college scholarships that totaled over $15.4 million, a record amount for our school.
  • Average ACT score of 25.7 was well above state average of 21.6 and national of 21.1
  • Total Mean SAT score for this class was 1755, again well above the state average score of 1613 and national of 1498
  • Won 6 state academic state championships (Football, Boys and Girls Soccer, Wrestling, Girls Golf and Softball) and 6 state team championships (Girls Soccer, Water Polo, Girls Basketball, Hockey, Girls Golf, and Softball), plus two individual state championships (Boys and Girls Golf)
  • Performed over 5,000 hours of community service

 Surveys completed – thank you!

• Thanks to those of you who took our survey.  We have our survey data back from parents, faculty and staff and from students.  We had 219 parents, 59 faculty/staff and over 300 students complete the surveys.  We will be analyzing it over the coming weeks and will present it for discussion and 2013/14 prioritization at our June 10 Strategic Planning meeting, and then more broadly communicate the results and plans to our community later in the summer.   

Power Up/1:1 Blended Learning

• We held brown bag luncheons this month for students on our 1:1 Blended Learning program and they were sparsely attended but very lively sessions. 
• An update will be sent to parents this week to help prepare families for our August implementation.  It will include more specific recommendations, plans for the summer and what to expect in August.
• Work continues this summer on completing the wireless build out, Launchpad integration and the Digital Citizenship Class for students.

 Enrollment for 2013/2014

• Our numbers for the 2013/2014 school year as of 5/23/13 are:

                                                                                      2013/2014                             2012/2013

• Freshman                                          192                                          186
• Sophomore                                       191                                          188
• Junior                                                188                                         163
• Senior                                                152                                          143
• Foreign Exchange                               3                                               0
• Total                                                   726                                          68
  
• Retention has been excellent to-date.  Last year at this time we had lost 14 students (195 to 181) from the freshman class as they transitioned to their sophomore year.  This year, we have only lost 5 students (186 to 181).  Thanks to each of you for working in partnership with us to make this happen.

Summer Projects

• We have a busy summer planned for our school with several projects already underway.  The biggest one is the resurfacing and upgrading of our track.  We will be tearing up the existing track, installing curbing and new drain systems, expanding the  long jump areas, installing new fencing, repositioning the football field and putting a beautiful new running surface down on the existing asphalt base.
• We also will be upgrading our green house, installing interior locks for our classrooms, and upgrading our portable and some interior classrooms to prepare for our additional students and teachers.
• Finally, we will be finishing the build out of our wireless campus for our 1:1 blended learning initiative.  This will enable over 700 students and teachers to be on the network simultaneously and roam freely around campus without ever having to sign back in.

Culture of Philanthropy

• Our Philanthropy Council is now working on the implementation of the new Philanthropy Strategic plan.  We will be “buying out” over 16 small fundraisers that took a good amount of our students and parents time and did not raise much money.  The Annual Fund will pick up the additional $28,000 or so and the money raised in the past will be put into the individual budgets for the programs/sports.  More changes in processes and structure will be worked on this summer and announced to our BK community in August.
• We have begun planning our 50^th Anniversary of our school and are looking at combining it with a small campaign focused on new state of the art classroom wings, tennis courts, cafeteria and kitchen expansion and more.  Stay tuned for more to come this summer.
  

Spirit

• We celebrated a wonderful Senior All School Mass.  We did not announce students of the month but rather honored in front of the whole student body all the students who won awards at the Academic Awards Convocation in early May.
• We are in the midst of hiring our full-time Campus Minister.  We received 15 very good applications and have narrowed it down to three we will interview this coming week.

Mind 

• Our Science Olympiad students travelled to the University of Dayton from 5/16-5/19 to compete at the National Science Olympiad.  They did well at Nationals, with two teams finishing in the top 20 nationally.  Special thanks to all the faculty and parent coaches and kudos to the students for all their hard work!
• Our Music Department had their end of year concert on May 14 and it was outstanding.  This built upon their performance at the Heritage Music festival in Southern California where all three (band, choir and orchestra) won silver medals.  Our Music program continues to grow and achieve excellence.  We are sad about losing our Choir Director and Music Department Chair, Dr. Jeff Davis, to the College of Western Idaho, but are excited to have Lisa Cooper take over and find new ways to even better integrate choir, band and orchestra.
• Faculty/Staff Hiring – we have hired our new faculty members for Art, Math, French, Music and part-time Language Arts and are in the final stages of hiring two new Science faculty, a full-time Campus Minister  and our Assistant Principal for Student Life.  We have been very pleased with the quality of applicants who wish to work at BK and will be sending out an announcement of all our new outstanding new faculty/staff members in mid-June.

Body 

• Our varsity softball team continued their magical run and won state for the first time since 2007.  They won 15 games in a row to finish the season!  Congratulations to the girls and Coach Tom Antonopoulos and his staff, especially Wes Worrell.
• Our varsity baseball finished a tremendous season with the team taking third at State, losing a tough semi-final to eventual state champion Bonneville. Nice job all year by our players and Coach Bobby Sutcliffe and staff.  Our school hosted the 4A State Tournament and received many compliments on the organization, our facilities and the competence and friendliness of our people. Special thanks to Tom Shanahan, Dean Satterfield, Chad Blue and team, Bobby Sutcliffe and coaching staff and the Diamond Knights.
• We had several individual gold medalists and many PRs at 4A State Track.  Overall the girls finished 2^nd and the boys 5^th.  First year Coach Jeff Carpenter and his staff did an outstanding job. 
• At State Tennis, our boys came in 6^th with Elliott Klein taking 3^rd in boys singles.  We have a young team with much hope for next year. 
• Boys Lacrosse took second in the league, with a tough loss this past Monday to Mountain View.  Girls took 4^th overall after several injuries took their toll.  Special thanks to Boys Coach Blake Gaudet, who is stepping down after rebuilding our lacrosse program over the past six years. 
• Girls’ golf took their 2^nd straight State Championship and Haley Nist won individual gold.  The boys took a surprising 2^nd at state and freshman Hunter Ostrom took gold in individual boys competition. First year girls coach Derek McCormick and boys coach Vince Derig deserve shout outs for the team’s success.
• Our JV Girls Lacrosse, JV Boys Baseball, JV Girls Track, and JV Boys Golf all won district championships.
• Congratulations to all of our amazing teams and coaches this year at BK.  Bishop Kelly has once again been awarded the Moke Strong All-Sport Trophy, as the overall 4A SIC champions.  We have won this 9 of the 11 years it has been awarded and six years in a row!
• Bishop Kelly was awarded two academic state champions for spring sports. Congratulations to the Girls Softball and the Girls Golf teams for winning this award!
• Bishop Kelly’s Cole Oliver has been named US Lacrosse All-American!  Congratulations Cole!
• Finally, we have had record participation with over 400 of our 670 students involved in our co-curricular activities this spring.  Thanks to all of our coaches and parents for their support of our student-athletes.

We thank you once again for a very successful school year and wish our departing seniors and their families all the best.  Have a wonderful summer and see you on August 15! 

Kind regards,

Rich Raimondi                                             Bob Wehde
President                                                       Principal