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About Holy Rosary School
Holy Rosary Grade School serves families with students in 3K through fourth grade. Our school was established in 1914 and opened its doors for the first time in 1915. Since that time we have been, “uniting children with God.” Our School is fully accredited through WRISA and all of our instructors hold current teaching licenses through the state of Wisconsin. 

Vision
We believe that each child is a unique gift from God, deserving an education that is an extension of family, where students are given the confidence and support to achieve their full potential as productive citizens of the Church and our diverse society.

Mission
Our mission is to cultivate a love for Christ and His Church by inviting young students, and the entire parish community, to meet and know Jesus and embrace a loving God.  We seek to assist parents with excellent moral and academic formation for their children, developing the talents of all students and fostering a commitment to service, justice, and the sanctity of human life.

Holy Rosary School is open for in-person classes, 5 days a week. Full day options available for children age 3 through 4th grade.  Call 608-776-3710 for more information!

Last Updated 3/1/2025

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What criteria do we need to meet in order for the school to remain operational?

• Hire a Mission-Centered, Full–Time Principal.
• All Teachers/Staffing Needs Met.
• Guaranteed Pledge Income of $20,000 per Month, $240,000 annually. (This goal can be reached with 200 people giving $100/month or 400 people giving $50/month.)
• Net Enrollment Increase to More than 19 students. (Our goal is 29 Kids in grades K-4 total for 2025-26 academic year).
• Consistent or Increased Parish Offertory.

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What can the parish and wider community do to support the school?

• Pray for the Lord’s grace to be with us at Holy Rosary School.
• Donate and ask others to donate.
• Invite Catholic families you know to enroll their kids at our school
• Join a committee to put your gifts and talents to work to serve the mission of the school.
• Speak well of the school – teachers, leaders, community, and atmosphere. Negative talk, gossip, and rumors all do damage to our school’s reputation.
• Spread the word about our principal search.
• Share and like posts from the school on your social media (Facebook).
• Ask alumni you know to help with our efforts.

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In regards to the "Guaranteed Pledge" goal, how and why was $240,000 set?
This goal was set based on the financial needs of Holy Rosary School to operate on an annual basis.  This includes the costs of staffing, curriculum, classroom materials, utilities and general maintenance.

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What are the future budgetary goals to keep the school open? Is the goal for the school to be 100% self funded (no contribution from the parish/pastorate)? 
The goal is for Holy Rosary School to be 100% fully funded separately from the parish/pastorate due to the parish/pastorate’s current inability to fund or subsidize the school.

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I had heard that an original goal of the endowment fund was to help fund the school. Are there restrictions on using the endowment fund income towards school expenses?
The endowment fund was created for the parish, and since the school is a function of the parish, it includes the school.  Historically, this fund has been used primarily to allow for capital expenditures and projects at parish properties, including the school.  It is extra money available for the needs of the parish and school, however it is not meant to supplement operating expenses of the parish and school. The bylaws of the endowment do not mention the school operational expenses specifically.

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Part of the Annual Catholic Appeal is to support Catholic Schools.  How much support does the school get from the Catholic Appeal annually?
The Diocese of Madison does not currently give direct funding to any Catholic schools within the diocese. However, the Annual Catholic Appeal funds help support the schools through ongoing teacher formation, support for Catholic school administrators, programming resources for schools, and continuing direction for school leaders (lay and professional).

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What sources contribute currently to the "School Income" (referencing the "Revenue v Expenses" table from the "State of the School Summary")?
The school income is the income from student tuition, school specific donations, program fees (e.g. afterschool fees), DPI lunch program income, and any grant monies that come in.

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An Article from "The Priest Magazine" 

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"The Great Gift of Catholic Education"
 By Fr. Scott Jablonski (January 2017)
 
The first time I ever attended a Catholic school was in my early 20s. Up to that point, I had attended one public school after another, from kindergarten through college.
 
Public education taught me many useful things: how to read and write; the wonders of math, science and technology; basic historical and geographical facts; and even a few phrases in foreign languages. But, I also picked up many not-so-valuable habits and lessons over the years, due largely to the deficiencies of a secular educational model that sets aside all questions of ultimate meaning and purpose, objective truth and moral goodness.
 
Upon reading St. Augustine’s Confessions for the first time while in graduate school...I was struck by how similar his experience of non-Catholic education was with my own, even though we were separated by more than 1,500 years.
 
Speaking of his experience with his teachers, he wrote: “They gave no consideration to the use that I might make of the things they forced me to learn. The objective they had in view was merely to satisfy the appetite for wealth and for glory.”
 
Sadly, this was my experience as well. While we were growing up, if you had asked me or any of my classmates why we had to learn all sorts of ideas and subjects we had very little interest in (especially when there were sports to be played and movies to watch), we would have responded by echoing what our teachers had told us: so we could get into a good college someday. And, if we had been pressed as to why this was important, we would have continued along with some more of the same secular logic: so we can get a good job someday and make a lot of money and a name for ourselves. Or, to borrow the words of the saintly bishop from Hippo, “to satisfy the appetite for wealth and for glory.”
 
I honestly do not believe that a single classmate of mine before college - and I had hundreds of them - would have thought the true purpose behind all of our learning was to become saints. The notion that when we learn the truth of things we become more like our all-wise, omniscient Creator, and thus become more fully ourselves, was an idea that would have been far more foreign to us than any German or French verb. That our learning to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide was intended by God to help us serve him by serving our brothers and sisters was simply never talked about. But college, money and fame were.
 
Now, I don’t fault my public school teachers for instructing me as they did. I suspect that they were doing the best that they could given their own educational and formational experiences, as well as the restrictions placed upon them by government standards, regulatory agencies and the like. And, to their credit, they did teach me and my classmates many things that are useful and necessary in this world. For their efforts and sacrifices, I am grateful. I am also deeply grateful for the many good people of faith who teach in public schools and are trying their best to infuse their classrooms with God’s truth, goodness and beauty on a daily basis - even if they must do so subtly and subversively in our secular world today.
 
Upon returning to the Church - in which I had been baptized as a child but not in which I was raised - in my early 20s and upon entering graduate school in Catholic theology, I began to realize just how great a gift Catholic education truly is. In fact, outside of the Faith and the sacraments, I believe that it is the greatest gift the Church has ever given and will continue to give to the world. This is a bold statement, I know. But after experiencing even just one semester of solid Catholic education after a decade-plus of public schooling, it is a gift I will never take for granted going forward.
 
As a...pastor with a parish school, I am experiencing firsthand how challenging running a Catholic school in the 21st century can be. ...But, I believe all of these difficulties, as well as the many sacrifices that having a school requires of us, are worth it because of the great good that can come from Catholic education when it is done well. Having said all of this, I would like to suggest four concrete goods that Catholic education uniquely provides - concrete goods that make the difficulties and sacrifices more than worth it and that should inspire us to keep persevering in making Catholic education a priority.
 
1. Catholic education instills in students the conviction that truth exists and is knowable.
 
As Pope Benedict XVI so often remarked, our world today is ruled by a “dictatorship of relativism.” We live in a culture and a time that says: There are no absolutes, just many opinions.
 
It was this destructive philosophy that my classmates and I learned growing up, because even if it was never taught explicitly, it was implicitly behind every lesson we learned outside of math and science. And it is this “doctrine” that has caused so many problems in the lives of my peers: drug use, alcoholism, infidelity, ...addiction, etc.
 
I am grateful, therefore, to be pastor of a Catholic school where we can teach our young students that truth exists (you may recall Jesus saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life” in John’s Gospel), that truth has a name - Jesus Christ - and that in seeking, knowing and living the truth they will find the freedom to become happy, holy and wholly themselves.
 
2. Catholic education teaches students their God- given dignity.
 
Another concrete good that Catholic education uniquely provides is helping students to know they have great worth because they were deliberately created by Almighty God “in his image and likeness.”
 
As a priest, especially one with a background in psychology, I get to talk with many individuals who struggle with low self-esteem. And while these struggles can be serious at times and are often complex, I cannot help but think our culture would go a long way toward helping all people if we formed our children to know that they were lovingly created by an all-wise, all-good God, as opposed to their existence being explained solely as the result of a random, mindless, godless evolutionary process. (I am not criticizing all evolutionary theory, just that which is often taught and denies the God who directs it along with all of history.)
 
I am grateful to God, therefore, to be a pastor with a Catholic school where we can teach our students their great dignity and how to honor and respect the dignity of others, from conception all the way into eternity. In other words, we can teach them that every single one of us matters - so much so that Jesus Christ died for us.
 
3. Catholic education forms students in moral virtue.
 
All reasonable people know there are consequences in life. Sadly, many people today either do not realize this or want to deny this for ulterior motives. Nevertheless, a fact is a fact.
 
One of the consequences of living in our world today - a world that denies the existence of absolute truth and denies (at least in practice) the inherent dignity of every human person - is that we no longer can agree upon what the good life looks like. And, thus, we live in a broken culture where violence, hatred, lying, cheating, etc., are all regular behaviors.
 
This is yet another reason why I am grateful to be pastor of a Catholic school, a place where we can teach our students about the Beatitudes, about the Ten Commandments and about the cardinal and theological virtues; where discussions about how to better practice generosity, honesty, faithfulness, magnanimity, respect, reverence, justice and love are regular behaviors!
 
4. Catholic education offers all of us hope.
 
Finally, Catholic education offers the Church and the world hope for the future and into eternity. It offers us hope that there will be a Church in future generations to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. It offers us hope that there will be an American citizenry in the future who knows how to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s but also to God the things that are God’s. It offers us hope that there will be doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, business leaders, government leaders, [farmers,] and working-class people who are using their God-given talents to serve the King of Kings as well as their brothers and sisters.
 
It offers us hope that God will continue to raise up young men and women to serve him as priests and religious. And, it offers us the hope that heaven will be much more crowded one day.

A few [years] ago, I celebrated holy Mass with all of our school students. In the homily, I told the students that they are all superheroes. They all looked at me a bit confused, but then I asked them what superheroes have that regular people do not. A few hands shot up, and I called on one of the students. “Superpowers, Father. They have superpowers.” “Exactly!” I said. “And so, too, do you. At your baptism, Almighty God gave each of you the power of the Holy Spirit to help you to do what you cannot do on your own - namely, to love him and to selflessly, sacrificially love others.” 
 
After the homily, I continued on with Mass and didn’t think twice about what I said, although I did hope God would plant a few seeds in the hearts and minds of the students. A couple weeks after this Mass, one of our school parents shared with my staff that the night before, while they were eating dinner, her son suddenly said, “Hey Mom, did you know that I am a superhero?” She responded somewhat skeptically, “You are, huh?” The boy continued, “Yeah! Father Scott said so at Mass one day. I have the superpower to love God and to love others!”
 
His mother shared the story because she was so impressed. I was even more so, as the young man [was] only in first grade! But, God willing, he will continue to grow into the saint that God calls him to be and, one day, he will be in heaven. And that is why [we should] continue to promote the gift of Catholic education!