St. John Church has begun efforts towards a building project. The driving force for this discussion is the recent decision by the Lawrence School Board to reconfigure the schools in Lawrence to move the 6th grade into newly formed Middle Schools, and 9th grade into the High Schools. Prior to this decision, St. John was one of the very few schools in the Archdiocese not to offer 7th and 8th grades because of the public school configuration; therefore, the parish did not need to expand our school facility.
With the new USD 497 configuration which is set to be implemented for the 2011-12 school year, our parish is faced with a hard choice to eliminate 6th grade, or expand our parish school to include 7th and 8th grades. Fr. John would like to see our school expanded to include the 8th grade. The current St. John School Council has spent most of this year discussing this issue, and surveyed current school families to find out how they felt. Results indicated that current parents would indeed send their children to St. John school for 7th and 8th grades if we had that option. To do so will require adding classrooms to accommodate the additional students and programming. There is also a second factor at work here which is the growth of our parish over the past few years.
As many parishioners can attest, parish activities and ministries are frequently in conflict with using our parish facilities during daytime and evening. Fr. John believes that an expansion of our parish facilities would enable us to solve some of these problems so that both parish ministries and the school can continue to grow.
You can make a pledge by completing this Building Project Pledge Form and returning it to the church office or collection plate during Mass.