April - President's Report

In this special solo episode of Rooted & Rising, Andrew McDonald shares a comprehensive community update, offering insight into where Billings Catholic Schools are right now and how mission continues to guide the path forward.

Drawing from the April President's Report and systemwide reflections, Andrew discusses key developments including progress in the Facilities Master Planning process, staff transitions and hiring priorities, enrollment trends, academic growth, and investments in safety, technology, and stewardship. He also highlights the vibrant life of our schools, from Early Childhood through high school, where faith, family spirit, and academic excellence are lived out daily through classrooms, service, arts, athletics, and community engagement.

This episode is a transparent look at the work happening across the system: celebrating encouragements, acknowledging challenges, and reinforcing confidence in the direction ahead.

It’s an invitation to pause, reflect, and remain connected to the mission that unites our schools.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Rooted in Rising, a short podcast where we highlight the people, programs, and moments that make Billings Catholic schools special. Each episode, we'll spend just a few minutes sharing one story from across our system. Something worth noticing, worth celebrating, and worth building on.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

I'm Andrew McDonald, and I'm glad you're here.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

All right, everybody. Welcome to today's episode of Rooted in Rising. Uh, this is a little bit different. Um I wanted to try something a little bit different today because I wanted to take some time to share a broader community update. Where we're at as a school system, what we're learning, and where we're headed together. This update is normally shared in writing as part of the president's report, but it felt important to also share it in this space. It's a little more personal, more direct with a wider community as well. At the heart of everything that we do really remains our mission: faith, family spirit, academic excellence. And that that mission continues to guide decisions large and small, especially in a season like this that calls for both realism and hope. My goal today is to share how that mission shapes our work across classrooms, campuses, and our system as a whole. Much of the system level work that we've done this year is centered on the facilities master planning process. We engaged the community in surveys, facility evaluations, we looked at enrollment and demographic analysis. We did a thoughtful community visioning session as well, where a lot of people were able to gather together and explore different possibilities for the future. We heard from parents, students, staff, parishioners, alumni, and community partners during that session. And through the surveys in that session, overall what we found was that the message really from everyone was clear and affirming, right? Our our small school culture, the small feeling of our school, strong academic outcomes, and then the Catholic identity really remain our greatest strengths. That's what people were looking for, and that's what really shone through in these survey results. At the same time, though, we heard honestly about challenges. We have aging facilities, safety concerns, space limitations, and there's a need for balance across academics, arts, and activities. We all know we've got a really strong sports program, but how are we how are we showing the same level or giving the same level of emphasis to our other extracurriculars as well, our arts, theater? Most importantly, though, that assessment confirms something critical: that our future vitality is not really driven by growth alone. It's more driven by intentional stewardship, clarity of identity, and student-centered investment. So that clarity puts us in a strong position as we enter this next phase. We call it the explore phase of master planning, including an upcoming design and charret session where potential solutions really begin to take shape. This is where we start putting blocks on paper and start exploring, you know, what are those opportunities? What things can we do? We've got a really exciting opportunity for the future when we gather community members again on that charrette session. We also navigated some staffing transitions during this season. In in any mission-driven organization, especially one rooted in family spirit, that these moments are difficult. They require care. And I want to express my deep gratitude to the faculty and staff who continue to prioritize students, support one another, and uphold our values amid change. Transitions are never easy, but they do also give us opportunities. We have an opportunity to hire really deliberately, to strengthen mission alignment, and to welcome educators who share a commitment to collaboration and whole child formation. These are key things for us here in the in Billings Catholic schools. Our people matter. Really, they're our greatest investment. We also got some time to think about our early child education, early childhood education. At ECE, the foundations of formation really continue to be laid with great care. That building is incredible, wonderful culture, uh smiles everywhere. If you ever need a smile, that is the place that I go. Parent-teacher conferences offered families a window into growth and development over there, while our preschool teams continued intentional collaboration around hand strength, sound tracking, and early literacy. I was especially struck by the way our high school students continue to serve our youngest learners, with 12 central students spending the day at ECE helping with maintenance and classroom support, which is really kind of that expression of family spirit when they had their day of service over at the high school. Moments like the Palm Sunday procession remind us that faith formation begins early and that our youngest students experience it through joy, ritual, and community. Please continue to keep the Lee family in your prayers. This is what it means to be a school system that truly walks together. If you don't really know what we're talking about, I encourage you to take a look at the president's report as well. That'll be posted on the website and sent via email to the community. Over at St. Francis Catholic K through eight, there's been strong momentum in three different areas faith, academic growth, and safety. Students participated in retreats, service projects, stations of the cross, and reconciliation, often led by students themselves. Bishop Fleming also came down and joined us, spent a day with us, and that was a meaningful reminder of our connection to the wider church. Academically, spring testing is underway, and there's a strong interest at the kindergarten level, which points to continued vitality. Again, we're we're looking at uh four kindergarten classrooms for next year, so pretty exciting growth in in that that part of our school as well. Uh behind the scenes, we've invested in updated security cameras and door systems, and those improvements go unnoticed by a lot of folks. That's that's kind of the point. But they really are essential to ensuring safety and welcoming campuses. Then over at Central, the month offered a powerful example of faith, family spirit, and excellence working together through the annual day of service. But we sent students across the community into shelters, parishes, and service organizations, uh, living out of faith that really moves beyond the classroom. We also had Fiddler on the Roof, which you can hear more about in the What's With All the Drama podcast, showcasing incredible talent and collaboration, and some spirit days, prayer experiences, and community fundraising efforts really reveal a student body that's that's deeply connected to one another. Academically, students continue to rise. We had the ACTs, we had strong performances in math competitions and exceptional success in HOSA, as you can hear about in that podcast episode, all showing, right, that these achievements matter not just because of rankings, but because they reflect preparation for meaningful lives of service and leadership. There's a lot of work though that goes on behind the scenes to make all of this possible. You know, in education leadership, we've we've begun the search for the next director of education, really important role that's going to help guide instructional coherence and growth for our system. Please keep that search in your prayers. Our technology team's been upgrading systems across all the campuses. We did an email migration, restored phone service, improved internet safety monitoring, uh, and really looking at that IT security. They've done so much work there to strengthen the IT security infrastructure. Facilities completed the solar project over at St. Francis, and we're really seeing the fruits of that. It's producing, you know, often operating at around 30 watts. And uh we're transitioning into summer planning as a facilities team with a continued focus on safety and stewardship. And then finance, HR, and operations teams are deep into budget season as we look at next year. Uh, we're doing contract prep prep benefits coordination and tuition assistance. Tuition assistance is one of those things this is is attainable for the Catholic education, is attainable for folks in in our community. So if you're interested, if you if you want your child or or if you want to be a part of the Billings Catholic School system and you're not already and you're hearing this podcast, please reach out. If you are already a part of this system, I hope you know that that that financial aid is available, and we do everything we can to get that get that where it's needed most. This is all mission critical work, even when it happens out of sight. But importantly, none of this work happens alone. We just had the the St. Francis Art Gala a couple months ago, and then we've got Mayfair coming up right around the corner. These are these are reminders of the generosity, the engagement, and belief that surround our schools. If you if you have never been to Mayfair, I encourage you to attend. If you go every year, I can't wait to see you there. I'll probably be working check-in again. I need a job at the beginning. It allows me to say hello to everybody, so stop by and say hello as we get you checked in. To parents, grandparents, donors, volunteers, staff, parish leaders, community partners, thank you. Your trust and support really sustain our mission. And that's also why we launched Rooted in Rising. That's also why we launched this podcast. This is it's intended to provide a personal, transparent window into the life of our schools, celebrates the good work happening every day, and and offers insight into the decisions that shape our future. These updates, whether written or spoken, are about more than reporting progress. They're about reinforcing confidence in the direction that we're heading. And we can't we can't do that alone. So thank you for walking this journey with us, with faith, patience, and hope. And please know that the president's reports are always posted on the website as our board meeting minutes so that you can stay connected that way if you're interested in in digging a little deeper into some of the updates that I mentioned uh on this special episode today. Really grateful for everybody that tunes in, grateful for the continued support. Hope to see folks soon, right around the corner at at Mayfair and then at graduation or continuation, all the events that we have at the conclusion of the school year. Really excited for some of the stuff that's ahead. Uh, and can't wait, uh can't wait to celebrate the great work that happens every single day. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Thanks for listening to Rooted in Rising. We'll be back next week with another story worth celebrating.