Building on
Solid Ground
St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School, as an institution, has been in existence for nearly 150 years. In that time it’s evolved a culture that’s utterly unique, based first and foremost on its close community, but also on its three central pillars of academic excellence, Catholic faith, and service to others.
SFA’s culture is something that everyone in the alumni community has benefitted from and continues to benefit from, and something generations of Highlands residents have come to know and admire.
That culture is still going strong. Our near-full enrollment is a testament to what our school continues to achieve year after year — remarkable given the headwinds now facing parochial education.
For times do change, and with them the challenges that come with maintaining a top-quality pre-K-through-8th-grade school. Ensuring that we remain equal to those challenges — providing the facilities, the faculty, and other resources that our students need to thrive — is the reason we have created the Future School Fund.
So that the prodigious benefits of an SFA education are available to students now and in the future, just as they were to us.
“St. Francis’ programs continue to impress me every single year. Whenever I interact with SFA graduates, their sophistication and knowledge come shining through. They are pushed to reach their limits with a gentle and loving hand behind them, and they give me hope for the future generations of this country.”
— Michael Budniak, AP Biology Instructor, Trinity High School
“I feel so incredibly lucky to to have grown up with the St. Francis community, which provided me with friendships, bonds, and skills to last a lifetime. I will carry all of the lessons and life skills that I learned at SFA with me forever.”
— Mimi Peters, SFA Class of 2017
“ I graduated from St. Francis of Assisi and ultimately spent two years teaching in Spain. In fact, during that time, there were seven SFA graduates teaching in different parts of Spain. During college, I always felt that I was one of the best prepared students in the classroom and I know it came from the daily Spanish training I received at SFA.”
— Hannah O. Heine, SFA Class of 2006
No Ordinary Little School.
Why does SFA go to all the trouble of maintaining such an exceptional culture? Quite simply because it produces exceptional young men and women. There’s something in an SFA graduate that you recognize when you meet one, a confidence and a strength of character that’s hard to put your finger on. It can be quantified.
Other things about our graduates, however, can be quantified. Such as their levels of achievement. Last year, SFA 8th graders scored an average of 572 on their high school placement tests, which is a full 77 points above the national average, and 61 points higher (11%) than the Louisville Archdiocese average.
Better still, our Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Performance (NWEA MAP) scores for third, fifth, and 8th graders were an average of 45% above the national average in reading, and 40% higher in math — placing them in the top 15% of all MAP scores in the US. No wonder then that over 91% of our graduates are on their high school’s honor roll each semester.
It’s a track record of consistent, year-upon-year excellence that few other schools our size can match, and why St. Francis has been twice designated a US Department of Education National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence.
Setting a Course for the Next 100 Years
The Future School Fund is a capital campaign created to help ensure St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School can continue to cultivate excellence among future learners — to help guarantee that it has the facilities, the faculty, and the resources it needs to meet the challenges of the coming decades. There are three ways to give.
Facility Improvements
In keeping with the 100-year anniversary of our building, we’ve made facility improvement the cornerstone of the Future School Fund. Central to this project is an addition to the northwest corner of the school building which will contain redesigned and expanded science lab and more learning space for early education and learning differences programming.
Teacher Support
Attracting and keeping the faculty it takes to maintain our level of achievement will be one of the most critical challenges facing SFA over the next ten years. Which is why we are creating a Teacher Endowment to help cover resource and professional training costs for teachers.
Student Tuition Support
Each year we work to keep tuition costs as affordable as we can. The reality, however, is that as much as we work to keep tuition low, increasing costs put us out of the reach of many. Our tuition support fund will help keep SFA within the grasp of more deserving young families.
“Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
— The St. Francis of Assisi Please Consider A Gift
A centennial observance only comes once in a lifetime. What better time to recommit to St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School — to take stock of the gifts it has given, and commend them to future generations of learners?
Remember: there are many different ways to give to this campaign. Within each category of giving there are innumerable ways to be generous to SFA. To find out more about specific types of giving: restricted gifts, unrestricted gifts, estate giving and more, contact the parish office at (502)456-6394 to request more information or set up an appointment. To give right away, simply click the blow button. St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School thanks you for your generosity!