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Dear Friends,
I am thrilled to share with you that the 2016-2017 Academic Year was an historical year for Escuela de Guadalupe! Due to the success of our Raise Your Hand Campaign, we were able to expand our school from its exceptional and proven K-5 model to include Pre-Kindergarten and 6th grade. Our enrollment went from 124 students in 2015-2016 to 176 in 2016-2017, creating a 42 percent increase in enrollment in one year!
Our Pre-K families were elated to be able to send their children to our warm, Catholic, dual-language community here at Escuela. And in a huge step for our school, our 5th graders were able to continue on to 6th grade—our first ever middle school class at Escuela! What a privilege to witness this exciting growth in our community! For years, so many of our families had been asking for us to offer a Pre-K and middle school to their children; having them learn and grow in our K-5 program, our families had to then scatter all over the city to supplement what Escuela could offer. Now, because of the generous support of our partners, we are able to continue the same high academic expectations, warm community, and leadership formation right here at Escuela—all the way through the formative Pre-K and middle school years!
In addition to the money raised through the Raise Your Hand campaign, and thanks to an ever-increasing number of partners, we raised 1.2 million dollars for our annual fund this year. Generous support like this makes it possible for us to deliver a high quality, faith-formative and cross-cultural education to more deserving children. We will continue to expand our program until we have a full-fledged Pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade at Escuela de Guadalupe!
In another major milestone for our school,the addition of 6th grade made it possible to have sports teams at Escuela for the very first time. Unsure if students would really want to run as a sport, we were pleasantly surprised when more than half of our eligible 5th and 6th grade students joined our first team ever—Cross Country! We joined the Catholic Schools Athletic league, and also fielded boys’ and girls’ basketball, and girls’ volleyball teams. It was fun to watch our students gain confidence as they learned the basic skills. For many of our students, this was their very first opportunity to play an organized sport and to learn to compete as a team. Of course, every sports team needs a mascot, so after a contest among the students, it was decided that Escuela de Guadalupe athletes would proudly bear our emblem as the “Lobos”! We actually wonder if it is because they are able to howl when our athletes take the field that this mascot won the contest!
We find ourselves poised to not only continue the great legacy of 18 years of Escuela, but to elevate our school to the next level as we expand our student body to include more and more worthy and eager students.Their success provides evidence of the fulfillment of our vision. Thanks to you, we will continue to form compassionate leaders and 21st century changemakers. We hope that this Annual Report inspires you as much as it inspires us to continue that mission.
Sincerely,
Paul F. Dull
President