Dear Alumni,

Many things are happening at your alma mater!

Nicholas Senn High School’s Local School Council (LSC) initiated a process to develop a 5-year strategic plan designed to recognize, build on, and celebrate Senn’s strengths inside the school and throughout the community. Facilitated by the Executive Service Corp, a strategic planning committee made up of Senn parents, students, staff, community organizations, religious leaders and elected officials was formed to lead the process.

To date, the Senn Strategic Planning Committee (SSPC) has sparked or supported several new initiatives:
1. AVID (Achievement Via Individual Determination) program expansion to include freshmen, sophomores and juniors. An excellent collaboration between Senn and DePaul University has resulted in a $399,000 grant from AT&T to continue development and expansion of this program.
2. A Green curriculum task force, a collaboration between sspc, the faculty, a new student club –the green team- and State Senator Heather Steans has established two pilot projects:
a. students give up 2 lunch periods weekly to collect recyclables and keep them out of the waste stream.
b. a new community garden to be planted on the school campus. All the pots for the seeds, the student make from recycled paper they have collected.
3. Reestablishment of the Senn student council. Dormant for several years, the student council, now meeting Friday mornings, has re-emerged and is playing a vital part in school operations.

A secret to the ultimate success of Senn is parent involvement. Our newest initiative will begin a parent group in the fall of 2009 for incoming freshmen parents.

You can help! We need a $2000 grant for the startup costs of the first year. This will include quarterly meetings with dinner and childcare, mailings, setting up an email list. The start up cost will build a group with the 2009-2010 freshman class, with the expectation of growing a self-sustaining group with every new freshman class thereafter.

Enclosed is the budget for this effort. We thank you for the opportunity to make this request and for your consideration. Please feel free to contact us with your input and suggestions

Nicole Jurek & Mimi Harris/
Senn Strategic Planning Committee
773-275-5799

View the budget here: http://www.cpsalumni.org/node/4037