Gift Impact

You can’t overestimate the impact of a gift to St. Mary’s-St. Alphonsus Regional Catholic School.  Catholic schools have long been adept at stretching a dollar to its utmost limits -- and SMSA is no exception!

 

Unlike many other educational institutions, SMSA has no endowment upon which to draw.  Other than our General Fund and Cornerstone Project checkbooks, we have only a long-term investment account representing less than 25% of a single year’s budget upon which to draw. Every gift you give to SMSA, then, goes into action almost immediately!

 

Here’s a sample of the impact your gifts have had here in the last five years:

 

Your Guardian Angel gifts have helped:

 

Your Annual Fund gifts have helped:

• Attract more than 70 new students, bringing our enrollment to more than 300.
• Provide a salary for a new Spanish teacher who helped us expand our foreign language program to begin in Grade Two.
• Purchase materials for a new Creative Arts Lab where students engage in fun activities while learning about cultures around the world.
• Helped our students launch a new newspaper, The Scoop.
• Rent the Charles R. Wood Theater for SMSA Players’ sold-out musical productions that garnered rave reviews from the community.
• Provide the salary for a new French teacher, allowing us to offer a second foreign language.
• Provide the salary for a second middle-school math teacher, allowing us to broaden our math curriculum.
• Purchase new uniforms for the Kerry Blue teams.
• Provide faculty with professional development on incorporating technology into the curriculum and on new math standards.
• Provide the salary for a full-time tutor, allowing us to offer one-on-one help to students who don’t qualify for special education programs but need assistance.
• Expand the half-day pre-K program to include one full day, allowing students to prepare for full-day Kindergarten.
• Provide an office for a new school counselor.

 

Your Cornerstone Project gifts have helped:

• Convert a lecture hall into a theater, allowing us to offer a performing arts program unique among area elementary schools.
• Paint and carpet every classroom in the school.
• Furnish the third- floor classrooms and replace the lockers, creating a brand new middle school for sixth, seventh and eighth-graders.
• Put new floor, sound, lighting, paint and acoustical panels in the gym.
• Purchase modern, efficient equipment for the kitchen.
• Buy new round tables for the cafeteria.
• Convert a storage room back into a science lab, allowing us to offer a class in Regents Living Environments (biology).
• Convert an unused room into a clay studio, allowing us to offer art students a chance to work with clay.
• Plant a lush new lawn on which the children can play.
• Buy new playground equipment and fencing to keep the children safe.
• Replace crumbling front steps with beautiful new granite ones.
• Replace the crumbling sidewalks in front of the Church Street entrance.
• Replace an interior staircase.
• Provide a new security system.
• Provide new interior doors at the Church Street entrance.