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Educators present at NCEA

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
(Email Katie)

The National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) convention is a time to share and learn about what other schools throughout the United States are doing.

At this year’s NCEA convention three sessions were presented by representatives of the Diocese of Sioux City. The convention was held April 14 to 16 in Anaheim, Calif. Other educators from the diocese were also in attendance.

Diocesan Web solution
Cindy Spenner, technology coordinator for Bishop Heelan Catholic Schools, and Angie Heller, director of marketing and public relations for Bishop Heelan Catholic Schools, gave a presentation titled “Under One Umbrella: a Diocesan-wide Web site Solution.”

The two talked about the history of how the diocesan Web site collaboration came about and how they selected School World. They explained that the Catholic schools in the Diocese of Sioux City were offered marketing grants and many expressed the need to revamp their existing Web site or the need to create one.

Heller, who was involved in the process, noted that the Office of Education realized the need for this throughout the diocese. They looked at what could be done for all of the schools.

“What we presented at the NCEA convention was the vision that each school would remain its own identity through its own Web site template but yet the templates would be interconnected,” said Spenner. “This allows the diocese to post news and calendar features on each schools calendar as needed.”

The topic was submitted for the convention because “the answer to a lot of our marketing needs is fulfilled with a Web site,” she said.

Spenner mentioned that she received good feedback from attendees of the session. A few attendees including representatives from the Diocese of Los Angeles went from the session to the School World booth at the convention because they were impressed.

“The NCEA convention was a wonderful celebration of our Catholic education and the importance of our Catholic schools in the United States,” said Heller, who attended the convention for the first time this year.

Having a school board
The session that Father Craig Collison, pastor at Sacred Heart in Sioux City, was a presenter for was titled

“Restructuring for Success involves Boards! Why do we go there?” He presented with two people from New Jersey, who are just starting boards in their area.

“I was asked to do a presentation on taking multiple boards and merging them into a single board,” said the priest. “We are finding that in our diocese some of our schools have merged several schools into a system. It became more economical. It was the idea that we could put many boards together and still have everyone adequately represented on a single board.”

He explained that some schools in the country are just now starting school boards. The two other presenters talked about starting a board.

“We are quite a bit ahead of things in our diocese in regards to the importance of school boards and people being involved in those,” said the priest. “It was fun to go out there and see where people are at regarding their ideas of school boards.”

Father Collison said that having a school board is a way for people to share ideas as well as a place to make policies for the school or system.

“I did get good feedback that people thought it was worthwhile,” he said. “I appreciated that.”
Although he has attended an NCEA convention before, this was the first time he contributed to a presentation.

“I felt really good about the fact that from our diocese that we had three presenters this year,” said Father Collison. “It is good that we get invited to speak.”

Vision Driven Change
David Newbrough, CPA, director of finance for Bishop Heelan Catholic Schools, and Father Patrick Walsh, president of Bishop Heelan Catholic Schools, gave a presentation titled “Vision Driven Change: New Configurations for Catholic Schools.”

According to Newbrough, the presentation was put together by Father Walsh after he had been contacted by the NCEA in late 2007.  NCEA selected this and four other school’s presentation proposals for the SPICE conference held in Boston in June 2008.  Father Walsh, Tom Miklo, development director of St. Edmond’s in Fort Dodge and Newbrough presented there as well as at the 2009 NCEA convention in Anaheim.

“The presentation went very well,” said Newbrough, who attended the NCEA convention for the first time. “Father Walsh did an excellent job explaining how creating a long range vision for a school is by far the best way to move forward and advance your institution.”

The presentation detailed how the changes were made, the challenges of the change and the results achieved.
Newbrough mentioned that they allowed participants to ask questions at anytime during the presentation and many did. There were more than 50 attendees at their presentation.

“It was very gratifying to be able to possibly help other schools around the country move themselves forward,” said the director of finance. “Even though we are in fairly uncertain economic times, there seemed to be a large contingent of committed Catholic school administrators and teachers who wanted to be able to make a difference at their schools and committed the time and expense of being there.”