Notre Dame held its annual St. Peter Chanel Dinner last night, which, for the fourth year in a row, was hosted by Andiamo Italia and its owner, Notre Dame alumnus Joe Vicari ’(75). The food and ambience were exceptional as per usual and this year’s program focused on the exceptional talent of the school’s many students involved with robotics.
St. Peter Chanel Society members are recognized every year for their generous support of NDPMA and for exceptional enthusiasm for the school’s role in private, Catholic education.
In addition, Andy Guest, Notre Dame’s head of school, presented a State of the School address to attendees last night, the entire transcript of which is reproduced below.
More on Peter Chanel:
Father Peter Chanel was one of an early group of Catholic missionaries to the Southwest Pacific who set out from France in December 1836. The group was destined to found the Catholic Church in Western Oceania and New Zealand. Father Chanel and a Marist catechist, Brother Marie-Nizier, lived on the island of Futuna, north of the Fijian Islands, and labored there for three years.
In 1841, Peter Chanel was killed by a group of warriors incited by the leading chief of Futuna, in hatred of the faith that threatened his control over the people.
Peter Chanel was acknowledged as a martyr in 1889 and canonized in 1954 by Pope Pius XII. As a foundation member of the Society of Mary, Peter Chanel is acknowledged by the wider Marist family, including the Marist Sisters (Peter Chanel had a sister in this congregation), and indeed all of the Marists worldwide in Australia, Europe, Mexico, New Zealand, Oceania and North America.
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is sponsored by the Marist Fathers and Brothers of the USA Province.
NDPMA Head of School Andy Guest’s address at the St. Peter Chanel Society Dinner – 2017
Good evening! I have addressed this audience every year for the past 13 years, but this is the first time I have addressed you, officially, as the head of school. So I thought I would take this opportunity to provide both an update on the school and to share my vision of the school with you.
But first, I must tip my hat to the Marist Fathers and Brother Louis, who have managed the school since its inception in 1994. Fr. Joe Hindelang, s.m., who was the Marist provincial at the time, accepted the invitation from Cardinal Maida to resurrect what was then Pontiac/Oakland Catholic, and appointed Fr. Leon Olszamowski, s.m., the task to reconfigure, rebrand and relaunch the school.
When the Marists first took charge of the school in 1994 there were only 83 returning students. Since that time, the school has grown in acreage, building capacity, number of students and financial sustainability. Today, we have 1083 students from JK – 12th grade located on 88 acres of property and occupying 187,000 square feet of building space.
In the 13 years I have been here, we have acquired land, built new tennis courts, baseball dugouts, the Grimaldi Athletic Center (which includes an auxiliary gym, restrooms and concession stand), the Gifford Music Center (which includes an acoustically treated band room, large instrument storage, instrument lockers, music library, office, uniform storage and three acoustically treated practice rooms) and purchased, renovated, opened and expanded the Colin House (which houses our fundraising, alumni relations and marketing personnel at the school).
In the last four years, we have taken major steps to ensure the long-term sustainability of the school through the acquisition of property, relocation of the lower division (including a recent expansion), consolidated our debt, established the school as an independent Michigan educational corporation, and purchased all the grounds and property from the AOD.
The school now has 100% ownership stake in it’s future. We have assets appraised at $17.5 million dollars, debt of about $8 million and an annual operating budget of $18 million.
In March, we announced the March on to Victory campaign, which is the most aggressive campaign in the history of the school. Our goal is to raise $6.8 million dollars toward the building of a new science, arts and technology wing that will add 26,000 sq. ft. of academic space to our main campus, including eight classrooms, three science labs, two art studios, a robotics center and a green house.
At this point, I would like to play that video for you that we showed our parental community when we launched the campaign in March.
I am happy to announce that as of today, we have secured $5.24 million dollars in signed pledges toward our goal of $6.8 million. Based on that success, our board of trustees voted to break ground this past July. Though we still have more funds to raise, we expect to have the construction complete and plan to open the new facility in the fall of 2018.
We also announced that we received the second $1 million donation to the school in August. The first was a $1 million pledge to the March on to Victory campaign, of which we would not have a campaign without that leadership gift, from Bill and Melissa Kozyra, who are with us this evening. Thank you! The second $1 million gift was an anonymous, upfront cash donation to replace our existing 50-year-old baseball and softball diamonds with brand new AstroTurf fields.
So, what is my vision for Notre Dame?
There are four primary areas that I plan to focus on:
• Catholic/Marist identity of the school
• Academic Excellence
• Student Experience
• Accessibility
Catholicity
My first area of focus will always be the Catholic/Marist/Christian nature of the school. Notre Dame is a Catholic school and our mission is “With God, to form good Christian people, upright citizens and academic scholars.” Notre Dame is a school named after Mary. The words Notre Dame literally mean “Our Lady,” the mother of Jesus. Alma mater in Latin literally means “dear mother,” and we exist for one purpose, and for one purpose only: To educate students in academics and life in a warm and loving Christian environment.
As our community of religious nears retirement age — and that can be defined in many ways. (I am not actually sure we will let any of our Marists ever retire completely. At least, not by our choice), it will be critical for our lay faculty, staff and administrators to know what it means to be a “Marist” school, so that we can carry forward the legacy that has been passed on to us.
The world today can be very challenging and confusing for young people. Kids today have a great deal on their plates. They are inundated with technology and mass-media messaging from the point of birth. The country is at a political crossroads and is as divisive as it has ever been. We are becoming an entitlement society and we appear to be losing our moral compass.
Notre Dame, on the other hand, is a bastion of common sense and peace in an otherwise crazy world. We are an oasis in the desert, a place where young people can grow academically and learn to be good people, in a safe and loving environment with teachers who care, teachers who pray and teachers who believe in God. That is the Notre Dame difference. That is the Catholic difference.
Academic Excellence
My second area of focus is academic excellence. Catholic schools have always been recognized as leaders in education. And Notre Dame is no exception. In fact, we remain the first Catholic school in the nation and the only Catholic school in the state of Michigan to offer the prestigious International Baccalaureate program from JK – 12th grade. Studies show that more IB students go to college, more IB students get into their college of choice and more IB students will graduate from college than their peers. In fact, 69% of IB students will graduate from college in four years versus the national average of 36%. We have also been selected by NICHE, an internet-based organization that evaluates school across the nation as the best Catholic school in the state of Michigan for the second time in three years.
Last year, we had 176 graduates in our graduating class. 62 were accepted to the University of Michigan and seven to the University of Notre Dame. That means 40% of our graduates were accepted to what many consider to be the top public and top Catholic universities in the country.
The rest were accepted to more than 147 different colleges and universities across the nation including Ave Maria College, The Berkley College of Music, Boston College, Michigan State, Ohio State, DePaul, Hillsdale, Indiana, Loyola, Marquette, Northwestern, Penn State, Purdue, Seton Hall, US Airforce Academy, Oregon, Valparaiso, Wayne State, UD Mercy, Eastern, Western, Central, Northern, Ferris State, Grand Valley and Oakland University to name a few.
In fact, virtually every student that has graduated in the last decade has gone on to a four-year college or university. At NDPMA, we are opening doors for students. Doors that will educate them and prepare them for the future. If Notre Dame wants to remain relevant, we must continue our commitment to excellent academics.
Student Experience
But it’s not just about academics. My third area of focus will be the student experience. At Notre Dame, we want to develop the “whole student.” Athletics is an important part of developing the whole student. When we think back to our own high school experience, we usually don’t remember who we sat next to in English composition of trigonometry. Rather, we tend to remember the students who were on our football, volleyball or soccer teams.
Athletics teaches the kids the value of teamwork, perseverance (getting back up when you are knocked down), overcoming obstacles and the value of not only winning, but losing. That’s right. We want kids to learn not only about winning, but how to handle adversity as well. I am not sure about others, but I haven’t won in everything I have done in life. Kids need to learn how to fail without falling apart.
The student experience is also about arts. There are the performing arts (such as band, choir and theatre) as well as the visual arts (pottery, sculptures, drawing and painting). What moves us in life? Why does an oil painting by Renoir elicit so much emotion? Why are the stories in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales so timeless and why does a song by the Beatles inspire us to love others? We need to teach kids about things other than science, technology and business. We need to expose them to the softer side of humanity.
The student experience is about extracurriculars. Do you know that we have more than 30 different clubs in our school, including robotics, champions for life, student council, Model UN, multicultural alliance, newspaper, debate and students against destructive decisions (S.A.D.D.). In fact, I just found out last year that we have a knitting club. I was sitting on a bus returning from a sporting event and one of our students, Destiney Sandle, was knitting. Now, I knew she was an athlete and I knew she was a terrific artist, but knitting? So, I turned to her and asked her what she was doing. She said, “I am making a blanket for the knitting club.” I said, “really! I didn’t know we had a knitting club.” Apparently, one of our teachers knits for a hobby and started up a club. There’re a half-dozen students in the club. They meet once per week and they knit. What a great thing to do. And what a great stress reliever for those students!
The student experience is about health and wellness. For us, counseling used to be about academics and college acceptance. Several years ago, we added two full-time counselors in the upper division to focus on the social aspects of teenage life. What are the stresses that kids are under? From home, to school, to friends, what are the things in their lives that are keeping them from being happy and healthy? For it doesn’t do us much good to educate students for college, but have them not mentally healthy.
Accessibility
Finally, my fourth area of focus will be on accessibility. My ultimate vision is that every student who wants an NDPMA education and who can handle the academic workload, gets that opportunity. Our school is in one of the poorest cities in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. That gives us a tremendous opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. We currently have 38 students on full-tuition scholarships based on a partnership with an organization called Building Bridges. These are kids, mostly from the City of Pontiac, who have the aptitude to excel at a school like Notre Dame, but lack the financial resources to make it happen. Building Bridges is non-profit organization run by Paul Housey (a NDHS alum and current parent) that pays for 50% of all the tuition for each of these 38 students and the school pays for the other half.
Unfortunately, even with Building Bridges support, the school is only able to meet about half the demand for financial aid that is requested each year. That means if a family wants a ND education, but can’t afford it or can only afford a portion of it, we don’t have enough funds to close the gap. So what happens is we offer a family that needs $5,000 of aid $2,500 and hope they can swing it. Sometimes they do, but more often that that, we lose the family.
I want NDPMA to be more accessible for the middle and lower classes, I want it to be more accessible for minorities and people of color and I want it to be more accessible for Catholic families who want to get a quality Catholic education for their children. In short, I want Notre Dame to be the school of choice in Oakland County.
In closing, I would like to thank all of you (our most loyal supporters) for all you do to make our school the best school it can be. And, I want to assure you, that as head of school, I will continue to fight for Catholic education in southeast Michigan. I will fight to maintain the excellent academic reputation of the school. And, I will fight to make sure our students have a positive, balanced and well-rounded experience. In short, I will fight for the students of Notre Dame every day.
Thank you and have a blessed evening!
Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.
Follow Notre Dame on Twitter at @NDPMA.
About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school’s upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation’s best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame’s middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate “World Schools.” NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school’s home page at www.ndpma.org.