Our photo gallery now includes a brief slideshow of some construction photos taken June 15, 2010. Click the image on the left to see the slideshow. The photos show the church nearly completely gutted. The pews are gone and many of the interior features have been removed. This is the first in a series of photo galleries of our church renovation project. We are now using the Google Picasa photo album service to store our photo galleries. This new format will allow you to view a slideshow from within our website or you can click a link to go to the Picasa photo album page which will allow you to zoom in on the photos for a closer view. The photos are captioned and you can comment on each photo from Picasa webpage. We hope you enjoy this new format for presenting our photos. We have a backlog of more construction problems ready to upload over the next few days so keep checking the photo gallery button at the left side of this page to see what’s new.

Congratulations to everyone who was a winner at our International Festival last month. This photo is of Father Larry congratulating the Gorman family who were the winners of our $10,000 raffle. Here are our other winners

$10,000	Ben Gorman
1,000	Joycelin Flores
500	Maria Enriquez
Quilt	B. Steinmetz
Afghan	Jan Randolph

and here are the results of all poker tournaments…

Thursday night results

1st tie	Larry Jines	189
1st tie	Rodney Adams	189
3rd	Kim Lane	79
4th	Jennifer McLauchlen	65

Friday night results

1st	Josh Dinkel	405
2nd	Kathy Carder	225
3nd	Craig Bradham	162
4th	Amy McClellan	107
hh	Edith Pelayo 9,9,9,10,10	29

Saturday night results

1st	Lecil Perrin	449
2nd	Larry Hoopingarner	269
3rd	Richard Baldwin	179
hh	Jim Barr KKKKA	23

Beginning Wednesday June 9 the entrance for Mass and other church celebrations will be the far doors of the school building.  (All the doors to the former church and the doors into the school lobby are now off limits because they are a construction area.)

• Daily Masses will be in what is now the library (just off the cafeteria)
• Weekend Masses will be in cafeteria
• During the construction servers will dress in the sacristy (what has been the teachers lounge) which is off of the cafeteria

When our church renovation is complete, we are going to want to compare the old and the new. We came up with the idea to take “before” and “after” images of the church. On Friday, May 28 we took a series of 11 photographs from a tripod in the center of the church. The photos were assembled into a 360° panorama that is over 34.5 megapixels. When our renovation is complete we will make a similar panorama for comparison. Click here to see this amazing image. We hope to have lots of images posted during our construction and in December when the project is complete we will create another panorama to compare with this one.

The two most recent monthly school newsletters are now available online. They contain lots of great information about our new educational partnership with St. Michael’s School. The April and May newsletters are available in PDF format on these links.

• April 2010 school newsletter
• May 2010 school newsletter

Hello, my name is Connie Griffith. I am the chairperson of the St. Gabriel School Commission, and along with Dennis Dininger and Kerry Balding am a member of the West Deanery Unification Commission. Like many of you, we currently have children attending and children that have graduated from St. Gabriel. I personally graduated from here many years ago. Our love for this school is unwavering and like you we have spent a good portion of our lives and resources here. We will be sad when this school year comes to a close, but we rejoice in the knowledge that these changes, while difficult, will open the door for our children to experience an education that will become a model of educational excellence in the Archdiocese. Since this unification is new and unprecedented, it has created some misunderstandings. As a West Deanery Unification board member, I wanted to communicate this process.

The first phase was to unify St. Gabriel School and St. Michael School into one school for the 2010-2011 school year. We were to accomplish many tasks quickly in order to be ready for next school year. Those tasks were to appoint a new principal, create a tuition and fee schedule, approve a school budget, and provide guidelines for hiring teachers. The first task was to appoint a new principal of the unified school. With much deliberation, we chose two individuals, Sarah Watson and Matt Goddard, as co-principals. The reason was that the members of the West Deanery Unification Commission felt very strongly that we wanted individuals who understood and supported the K-12 model with the 21st Century Education. The Archdiocese actually suggested and is financially supporting a 2nd principal in order to accomplish our goals. We have created and published a tuition and fee schedule and we have already approved the school budget. As of this communication, Sarah Watson and Matt Goddard are working together to provide our school with the best teaching staff for our children’s education.

The second phase will start the 2011-2012 school year, when the elementary school with a new name (yet to be determined) will be joined with Cardinal Ritter High School to create the K-12 model. The schools will be under the direction and budget of Cardinal Ritter High School. This concept will continue to support Catholic education, provide educational excellence and prepare our children for a successful future both spiritually and intellectually.

We are pleased to announce that there is a new blog available on our website that will keep you up-to-date with all the latest information about our exciting new church building project. Currently it contains older articles from our homepage about the early stages of our plans including video of the public meeting where we approved the building project.

The latest entry is a link to a slideshow that shows floorplans, blueprints, and artist sketches of proposed stained glass windows for the new church. More photos and information will be coming in the weeks ahead.

The new blog is available at http://www.stgabrielindy.org/newchurch/.

You can always find the latest articles in the sidebar of this main webpage on the right-hand side of your screen under the title “New Church Building News”.

March 19, 2010

Dear Parents of St. Michael and St. Gabriel the Archangels Catholic Schools,

When the Archdiocese asked us to be part of the amazing educational opportunity being presented to our children, we were very excited. Through this unification process, we know our personal collaboration throughout the rest of this school year and during the 2010-2011 school year is of the utmost importance. Because of this, we started meeting immediately to work on the coming year. Both of us are dedicated to making St. Michael School a school which continues the current excellent programs and enhances the education of all students.

This coming year will be a year of great excitement, opportunity, and academic excellence. We hope you will come on the journey with us. We wanted to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves to you.

Mr. Matthew Goddard
As a life-long member of St. Michael Parish, I am thankful for the opportunity to be able to work with Miss Sarah Watson as the leaders of the school I grew up supporting. My parents (Dave and Jeri) chose this parish/school for my two sisters (Traci and Jenny) and me to enrich our Catholic faith. I attended St. Michael, kindergarten through eighth grade, graduating in 1995. I continued my education at Cardinal Ritter High School. During High School, I participated in many sports and other extra-curricular activities. After graduating from High School in 1999, I selected Franklin College to major in Physical Education, and to play tennis at the collegiate level. I transferred to IUPUI after 2 years and graduated from there in 2004. I then started my professional life as a physical education teacher at Our Lady of Lourdes and All Saints. In the 2005-2006 school year, I became the physical education teacher at St. Michael. As my years went on at St. Michael I took on more and more duties and realized I wanted to become an administrator. Therefore, I enrolled in the IUPUI Urban Principal Program and finished my classes last summer with my degree and license coming this May. That program, along with the current principal of St. Michael, Steve Padgett, helped me develop my own leadership and educational philosophies. These have established who I am as a principal.

I married my wife (Nichole) in the summer of 2006. God graced us with a baby boy (Quentin) on April 11, 2009. We are also the guardians of Nichole’s brother (Tyler) who is currently a junior at Cardinal Ritter High School. My family resides in Wayne Township.

With this opportunity to work with Miss Watson, who is a dedicated child-centered leader, we will make this transition as smooth as possible.

Miss Sarah J. Watson
As a native west-sider, I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to work with Mr. Matt Goddard as shared administrators at St. Michael School. Both St. Michael and St. Gabriel are close to my heart. One set of my grandparents were founding members of St. Michael Parish, followed by the second set joining in 1953. Both of my parents, their siblings, and all of my siblings attended St. Michael School, and my parents both taught at St. Michael in the early 1970s. I graduated from St. Michael in 1993. After St. Michael, I followed a long line of family members to Cathedral High School, graduating in 1997. In 2000, I graduated from Purdue University with degrees in Special Education, Psychology, and Social Studies Education. I received my Masters in Educational Administration from the University of Indianapolis in 2007.

After graduation from Purdue, I came to St. Gabriel School and began my teaching career. While at St. Gabriel I taught fifth grade, fourth grade social studies and language arts, resource, and acted as the lead teacher for the school. During this time, I also was the youth minister at St. Michael Parish. In 2006, I was hired as principal at St. Gabriel.

I see education as my true vocation. Spending my day teaching, learning, and leading is what God calls me to do. It is my privilege to be able to give back to the Catholic Education system my parents struggled to make a part of my life. I am honored to be at St. Michael and share this position of principal with Mr. Goddard. Mr. Goddard and I believe that children are the reason we are at school each day, and we desire to continue the student-centered approach that is at both schools now.

We know that over the course of the next few months several questions will be asked and answers to longstanding questions will be given. Please feel free to contact either or both of us with your questions, comments, and concerns. Mr. Goddard may be reached at mgoddard@indyarchangel.org and/or Miss Watson may be reached at swatson@stgabrielindyschool.org. We look forward to seeing those we know and meeting those we do not know at the open house on April 15, 2010, from 5:30 PM-7:00 PM. The staff for the coming year will be present at this open house, too.

Sincerely,

Mr. Matthew Goddard Miss Sarah J. Watson

March 10, 2010

To: St. Gabriel and St. Michael parents and parishioners

The West Deanery Unification Commission met on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 to discuss the appointment of an administrator for the newly unified parish schools.

After considering several options, all members of the Commission agreed to hire both Matt Goddard and Sarah Watson as principals, who have shared responsibilities for the coming school year, 2010-2011, at St. Michael the Archangel School. As was stated at the parent meeting at St. Gabriel School on February 28, having administrators from both schools will be advantageous in blending two programs.

The ongoing interest and support of the Archdiocese to help assure the future of Catholic Education in the West Deanery continues as this new partnership unfolds.

Over the next two months the Office of Catholic Education, in conjunction with Matt and Sarah, will determine the distinct roles and responsibilities of each position. However, this will not affect the process of hiring teachers, which needs to take place as soon as possible.

Guidelines have been drafted by the Commission that will enable the current principals of both schools, along with Matt Goddard, to make faculty and staff decisions by mid-April.

This unification of two Catholic parish schools and Cardinal Ritter High School provides a unique opportunity to develop a Pre K – 12 program in the West Deanery that will prepare students for the challenges they will meet in an ever-changing world.

Again we ask for your prayers and support as we move forward in this transition phase.

Sincerely,

Ginny Suttner

West Deanery Unification Coordinator

February 19, 2010

To: St. Gabriel and St. Michael Parishioners and Parents

Dear Parishioners and Parents,

In an effort to communicate with you regarding the uniting of St. Gabriel and St. Michael, the Archangels, Schools, I offer the following information.

My name is Virginia Suttner and I have been involved in Catholic education for a total of 31 years as teacher, principal and educational consultant for the Office of Catholic Education. On February 10, 2010, I was officially appointed as coordinator to assist and oversee staffing, curriculum, administration, and other related issues in this transition process.

Thus far in my short tenure as coordinator, I have interviewed the faculty and staff of both schools in order to better understand their strengths and the challenges they have faced in this unification process. I have had individual meetings with both principals to learn more about their school’s unique profiles. Additionally, Father Larry Crawford and Father Varghese Maliakkal met briefly with me to provide their perspective of this rapidly approaching merger.

A West Deanery Commission has been established with three members from St. Gabriel, five members from St. Michael, both pastors, the Dean of the West Deanery and the newly appointed coordinator. The members of this Commission are committed, involved and excited about this incredible opportunity to take part in the creation of a preschool through grade 12 Catholic school.

The Commission first met on February 16, 2010 to discuss four critical issues that must be addressed immediately: tuition, staffing, registration and communication. At the next Commission meeting on February 23, we will determine the tuition rates and registration fees for the next school year, 2010-2011, discuss hiring processes for administrators, faculty and staff, and review marketing materials.

An Open House has been scheduled at St. Michael the Archangel School, Sunday, February 28, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. We would like to invite all interested parents to an informational meeting immediately following the Open House. We want to be open to your concerns and will do our best to answer any questions that you may have.

I ask for your prayers and cooperation as I work with all of you on this new educational opportunity for your students.

Sincerely,

Virginia Suttner

West Deanery Consolidation Coordinator