STORM LAKE ST. MARY’S PARISH AND SCHOOL LONG-RANGE PLANNING

LONG-RANGE PLANNING MEETINGS FEEDBACK
Following are notes from the discussions held during our September 14 and 16 meetings. Thank you to all who attended and shared their thoughts and ideas:
Facilities:
A Parish Hall would be conducive to welcoming activities
Use pink envelopes to build up a building fund reserve when debt is paid off
The acoustics are bad in the north and south transcepts
We need a repair and preventative maintenance plan for our facilities
Why are the handicapped pews not at the handicapped entrances?
We need a youth center
Renovate the convent for more classrooms
Can we use facilities in Schaller if we are short of space?
Can we put offices and meeting rooms in the school?
State code will eventually require us to pave our parking lots
We need a multipurpose room for our facilities like a parish center – on the corner lot? What about playground space?
Are there opportunities at South School? What about the north end of the building?
Use the convent for offices space
Move the yellow rental house and built 2 stories onto the convent.
Can the yellow house be a new rectory?
Use the convent chapel for music rehearsals
If we need more office and meeting space, we need a facility that is a parish center

Spiritual/ministries:
Reach out to newcomers, be more welcoming
Need more youth involvement in ministries
Bring back communion services with priest shortage
Eucharistic Ministers could pick up a cross necklace when they come in – eliminate confusion at communion time.
Be more welcoming – add new parishioners’ names to the bulletin when the register
Names in the bulletin when people receive sacraments
We need to communicate what the Guild does for the church
We need to get more involvement in the Good Samaritans
We need to develop a youth program
We hope the number of masses don’t decrease with the priest shortage.
Fr. Bruce – we may end up with one priest spending half of his time serving the Anglos, half serving the Hispanics and the second priest spending all of their time serving the Hispanics.
Other churches have already started CCD and we haven’t
We should reach out to other countries i.e. sister parishes
Why do we have no-shows for weekend ministries?
We should have a children’s pull-out program during masses
School of Faith has challenges
We need to be more welcoming and walk up to people after mass and talk to them
Can we have a brochure to give to newcomers?

Cultural issues
More bilingual services
Should the noon and 6 p.m. masses be bilingual – children don’t understand Spanish
English/Spanish masses differ culturally
Why do we single out the Spanish mass collection in the bulletin?
The Hispanic community could have fundraisers for the church
We need to re-invigorate the multicultural committee that was started

Music
SLHS vocalists should be encouraged to help cantor
Have guitar masses to help with keyboard shortage
Renew the choir
Hire a music minister
Pay organists
We need a staff person in charge of music
If music is important to the liturgy, we should pay our organists to maintain quality
Guitar masses and contemporary masses provide variety in our music – would like to see more

Financial
We could have a second collection every weekend asking for a dollar for certain projects or to pay organists. Everyone could contribute.
If we have no debt, people will be lax with their donations
Our goal is to be financially solvent for many years

School
We should encourage growth at the school, not advertise waitlists
Why does the school have space issues? We used to have a high school 2.5X the size of the current one.
Can the school cafeteria be used for meetings or classrooms?
Whenever we have only 1 principal, they are overworked. Can we hire a curriculum director?

Thank you to all who attended the recent Long-Range Planning meetings so that we could get a feel for the needs of the parish and where we should be looking for the future. Thanks to your input, we summarized key areas for immediate action:
IMMEDIATE PROJECTS:

• We need to be a more welcoming parish. We ask every parishioner to make an effort to welcome newcomers. Take time to introduce yourself to someone you don’t recognize in the pew next to you!

• We will be implementing a dollar second collection for special projects. The first two projects will be raising money to pay our dedicated weekend organists, and raising money to help pay for the re-roofing of the rectory.

Pre-meeting Current Fact Sheet

Demographics

St. Mary Parish counts around 800 Anglo families; approximately the same number of Spanish-speaking families live in the community or surrounding area; most are Catholic and though not registered would be parishioners of St. Mary’s; most Spanish speakers are Mexican, though not all.

The Hispanic population of the area is stable if not growing.

Hispanic contributions to St. Mary Parish have gone up every year, including this year when contributions at the English masses were down.

Storm Lake is also home to other ethnic groups in smaller numbers than Spanish speakers. Of these there are Catholic families from Sudan and Oceania.

Parish

The diocesan long-range plan calls for two priests to serve St. Mary’s for the next 10 years.

The church renovation project kicked off in fall 2001 is nearly complete.

Five weekend masses in Storm Lake (3 in English, 2 in Spanish) and one in Schaller (Saturday evening) are covered by two priests and one deacon.

Five morning weekday masses are held in Storm Lake and two weekday masses are held in Schaller in English. There is also a Wednesday morning nursing home mass, and during the school year, one or two school masses / week. There are 2 weekday Spanish masses.

The rectory has a shared office, one employee working from home, and no room for future growth.

Six full-time employees currently work in the rectory with three part-time employees (including housekeeping).

We have one deacon and three men in formation for the diaconate.

We have no music minister (nor an office for one).

There is no conference room available in the rectory building for staff.

We no longer have any active Anglo choirs (at our peak we had 6 choirs).

The church is heavily used for sacraments, sacramental rehearsals, music rehearsals, prayer groups, school use, adoration, etc.

The one conference room in the church is heavily used for clerical use, child care, meetings, brides’ room, etc.

The only parish center gathering area available is the school cafeteria (kitchen is not available to the public due to federally-funded food service operations.)

The parish owns the yellow house north of the convent and rents it to a parish family.

School

The elementary/middle school were built in 1926 with the high school section built in 1955.

Offices and classrooms in the center of the two buildings were renovated in 1993.

We’ve been slowly gaining in enrollment in recent years. Fall 2009 showed an unusually large 11 percent increase in enrollment.

Space is at a premium: in one case we have three teachers sharing a classroom; our K-6 religion teacher is operating out of the cemetery office, sharing with the cemetery board.

The convent no longer has religious women living in it. However two teachers currently rent the living space (downstairs living area with chapel, living room, small office and kitchen, and bedrooms upstairs).

There are three classrooms in the convent and one weight room.

The school and rectory have been re-wired, but most teachers have old and slow computers.

The school facilities are also used for School of Faith from 5-8:30 p.m.once per week from September to April.

The school facilities are heavily used for diocesan events, retreats, weekend sacramental classes and associated daycare.

The school’s cafeteria is used for the After School Program and serves as our parish center (kitchen is not available to the public due to federally-funded food service operations.)

The pay scale for school faculty and staff continues to trail behind the public school.

The school added $22,000 in new playground equipment.

Financial:

St. Mary School finished the 2008-2009 fiscal year in the black; St. Mary Parish finished the 2008-2009 fiscal year in the red by $143,968

Scrip, The SOS Thrift Store and the Msgr. Lafferty Tuition Foundation have greatly aided the funding of St. Mary School over the past several years.

Parish giving was down this past fiscal year from the previous fiscal year.

Funds from the St. Mary Foundation for St. Mary Parish and School are minimal to non-existent at this time due to economic conditions.

The parish currently has a debt of $71,700.

Questions to ask ourselves :

1.        Where do we want the parish/school to be in 5 years?

2.        10 years?

3.        What if funding were not an issue, what would your vision be for the parish and school?