This has been a very busy and fun Catholic Schools and Extravaganza Week!  Today, our Campus Ministers served at the All School Mass for elementary students at St. Mark’s and we had a very fun pep assembly.  Tonight we have an exciting boys basketball game vs. 1^st place Skyview, the first annual SNOW BALL dance and great hockey, ski team, wrestling, cheer, and girls district basketball (Frosh/Soph, JV and Varsity semifinals) competitions over the weekend.

I wanted to connect with each of you on three topics today.  The first is our New Student Information Night on February 11 at 7:00 pm.  Thanks to those of you who have responded to my last email regarding helping us discover new families for the 2013/14 school year.  Your ideas, contacts and offers of support have been wonderful.  I wanted to bring your attention to the Reader’s View article that appeared this morning in the Idaho Statesman on “Catholic Schools – Faith. Academics. Service”, authored by Bob Sobotta, Superintendent of Catholic Schools, and me.  I believe it states the case well for considering Bishop Kelly and our Catholic elementary schools.  CLICK HERE to read that article.  Please send these to friends who have sons or daughters whom you think would benefit from a BK educational experience.

The second topic is the “My Bishop Kelly” campaign we launched last week.  We have received numerous positive comments from many of you and people in the community.  Thanks go to Katie Kerby, our Marketing and Alumni Director, and Jed Splittgerber (BK Class of ’99) of JedSplit Design, c308 Marketing, and Kelly Shockey, our Director of Admissions.  We have 13 billboards around the valley with pictures of the seven current BK students profiled on the MY Bishop Kelly Microsite.  Many of you have asked how we selected the students and have offered ideas of other current and “already in college” students to feature and several have suggested more diversity in our choices. We intentionally selected a broad cross-section of our student body for the initial campaign – boys and girls, BK legacy and just moved to Boise, Catholic elementary and public schools, interests in various athletic teams, clubs and the arts, Hispanic and white.  Our intention is to keep this section of our web site alive and launch a different phase of this campaign in the fall/winter of next year.  We will add new student profiles when seniors graduate and we have our new marketing budget for the 2013/2014 school year.  Thanks again for your positive comments and support of this campaign.

Finally, I wanted to let you know you will be receiving this coming week your registration materials for the 2013/2014 school year.  I wanted to highlight a couple of things for you.  One is that I am very hopeful that every one of your freshman, sophomore and junior students will be returning next year because we have met or exceeded your expectations.  Second, assuming we have and that you are all returning, it is critical that you complete and return this packet by March 15.  That will enable your student to register for classes for next year in late March and will allow us to better plan our curriculum, teacher assignments and budget for the coming year.

In the materials, you will note that your tuition for next year will be going up about 3% (+$210) and student fees up 2%.   We work very hard to keep tuition and fees as low as possible to ensure we are accessible to any student and family who wish to attend BK.  The 2013/2014 increases are driven by four factors – technology investments needed for our one-to-one computing initiative launching in the fall of 2013 (you will hear more in the coming week), salary increases to ensure competitive wages for our faculty and staff, expected health care and other benefit costs increases, and a modest (2%) increase expected in all other costs.  While I know tuition and fees are a big “investment” in your child’s future compared to other public school options you have, I want you to know that tuition at BK is the lowest amongst the 42 Catholic high schools in the western U.S.  And please also know that we will increase our available financial aid to help offset some of the increase.

Thanks again for all you give to our school community!

Rich