Cow calf operation layout

The St. Bridget’s PostApril 2015
2From One Parent To AnotherIt is my pleasure to write you through this second edition of The St. Bridget’s Post. It was my intention to focus my message this time on the amazing digital transition taking place in our school, and to discuss our plans to set up a Parents’ Advisory Board. However, I have heard from several parents regarding the recently announced increase in fees at the College. I thought it prudent to have an honest conversa-tion about the recent increase in fees. I will address the digital transition and the Advisory Board in the next edition of The St. Bridget’s Post. For now, let us talk about the increase in fees. Let me start by saying that though the increase in fees is absolutely necessary (for reasons I will get into presently), as a parent myself, I can understand how difficult it is for families to make ends meet with rising costs all around. Feeding, transportation, health, entertainment, etc. ALL these costs are rising for families. As a parent, I absolutely understand. It is particularly difficult when we, as most parents do, want to provide a quality education for our children. I am with you; increases in fees are difficult to ab-sorb given all the other demands on our family budgets. It becomes even more difficult when we have multiple children who we are committed to educating. I completely understand. Having said that, I would like to point out that the St. Bridget’s family is ALSO experiencing these very same increases in cost.We have held fees steady for seven years. Seven years! Every day we prepare about 1200 meals at the College (think about it, about 400 students three times a day); we pay for health services, transportation, boarding facilities, building maintenance, staff, and ALL the things that ANY normal family would pay for. I am certain NONE of us believes that ANY of these costs have been steady for seven years for the school. Costs have continued to rise but we have held the line. Each year, we have absorbed in-creasing costs while holding fees steady. As a matter of principle, we have held off on increasing fees in the belief that we have an OBLIGATION to provide HIGH QUALITY, AFFORDABLE education to EVERY child that qualifies to attend our school. However, that commitment becomes meaningless if it begins to erode our ability to provide the very quality of education for which parents entrust their chil-dren to us in the first place. We were beginning to run the risk of that erosion impacting our ability to provide the kind of education we are committed to providing. By the end of the last academic year we HAD to increase fees. That was well before the devaluation of the naira........We have been driving a digital transition in the school. ALL the digital devices, tablets, computers, serv-ers, learning aids, videos, books and the like which are transforming learning in the school are imported and paid for in dollar-denominated transactions. Recall that we started this effort two years ago. In the last five months the naira has been devalued by 40%. 40%! Yet we have continued to upgrade the facili-ties needed to deliver the kind of education we for our children. The school does not exist in a bubble. The devaluation (which occurred well after we had started this process) makes it imperative that we in-crease fees sooner and more sharply than we may have wanted to. Even with the increase in school fees, the school is STILL absorbing 81% of the added cost of the new services. The increase in fees represents a 19% cost share by parents in the way of added school fees. The school is covering the rest. I hope you would agree that this is fair......Message from Our Chairman