In September of 2008, we opened our school's new campus for the academic year.  Under a new name of Saint Joseph Academy, we are blessed with a 4 acre parcel, built with initial phase of 3 buildings supporting 13 classrooms, a computer room and administration areas.

As time and money permit, we plan to expand the campus with more buildings.  Our vision for the future is an enrollment of 400 students.

UPDATE January 2009

Dear Parents,

Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a restful, enjoyable and blessed Christmas season!

While the school may have been empty in terms of students, it was certainly not empty relative to construction workers. We used the two weeks of Christmas break to finish just about all of the remaining items on the construction task list. You have probably noticed that the decorative diamonds are now complete on the exterior of our buildings. Furthermore, the playground is fully installed including a nice soft bed of wood chips to protect our little ones when they inevitably jump from the equipment. We also installed very high quality basketball hoops on the upper basketball court and we just finished painting the lines on the courts as well. The lower basketball court hoops will have to wait a little bit until our budget allows us to purchase them. We also have completed all of the landscaping, most noticeably the parkway planter along Las Flores Drive. Lastly, we installed a fence around our storage bins to screen them from view.

With the completion of these projects I am very happy to announce that the construction of St. Joseph Academy is now complete. You don’t know how happy I am to say that! It has been a very long journey with lots of ups and downs. However, as with all journeys, the arrival is usually sweeter when there have been challenges along the way! It is certainly time for all of us to offer our prayerful thanks to St. Joseph, our patron, for his intercession. There were many points along the way when I said to myself, “How are we going to deal with this problem?” It was at these times that I would ask for St. Joseph’s help. He never let us down. One way or another we were always able to overcome the challenges that we faced.

It should also be noted that we are very close to paying the final bills for construction. The total cost for the project was $6.3 million and is summarized on the attached sheet. (Note: These are the costs all the way back to the beginning of the project when we purchased the land. Construction costs since July of 2007 when we started construction were $5.3 million of this total). Of the total project cost, we have already paid $1.5 million through your generosity and the generosity of our many benefactors. However, the remaining $4.8 million was borrowed from Discovery Bank. We will begin to make our monthly loan payments next month. The loan payment will be over $30,000 per month for 25 years! The source of funding for this monthly payment is a combination of sources. The first is that we will of course convert the cash for our old “rent payment” into a mortgage payment. Secondly, the “Founded on Faith…Building Our Future” pledges continue to come in. There is still an outstanding balance of approximately $115,000 from this fundraising campaign that will come in over the next four years. Additionally, we recently asked all of the families that are participating in this campaign to consider increasing or extending their pledge. The response to this request is that an additional $55,000 was raised. In addition to these two funding sources the balance of the monthly mortgage payment will have to come from the operating funds of the school. This was always expected and so far our growth has been on track and our net income is also where it should be. However, as we all know, we are living in some very uncertain economic times. Therefore, the Board of Directors will continue to monitor the expenses of the school closely to ensure that we continue to keep the Academy’s finances strong.

I’d like to end this final construction update letter with a few thank yous…

First of all, my thanks go to Pat Hansen and Barb DeLaTorre, our founders. It was their original vision and initiative that got this whole thing started in the first place!

Secondly, I want to thank Dave DeLaTorre. He has been a constant sounding board and right hand man on so many of the projects that we did ourselves rather than hire outside contractors. We saved a huge amount of money because of Dave’s willingness to help and personally, I often needed someone to keep my spirits up when the going got tough. Dave was that man!

We also all owe a debt of gratitude to Dave Lucia. His company, Lucia Painting was our painting contractor. However, Dave also did a lot of extra work that he never got paid for. Not only that, Dave was responsible for getting our decorative tiles painted. We had a lot of trouble getting the right tiles and had almost given up hope when he came forward and was able to find a guy to hand paint each tile so that they would be the right color.

Lastly, I want to thank my wife Kathy and our children. This multi-year journey certainly resulted in my absence from the home for many hours. However, the new campus is where they now spend most of their time and they all agree that it is better than the old one.

Through God’s grace, St. Joseph Academy is going to be around for many years to come. I look forward to hearing about the accomplishments of our students over the years as we slowly, but surely release our graduates into the world with strong Catholic education. Some of them will become priests, some will become nuns, some will become great leaders of men and some will live quiet lives of happiness raising families. Whatever their vocations, it is my belief that they will all be better men and women because of the time that they spend at St. Joseph Academy.

I thank all of you for your support over the years. That support has come in many forms ranging from physical work to donated items to building fund donations to words of encouragement to the most important support of all . . . prayer.

We have all accomplished a very great thing here at St. Joseph Academy. I look forward to the future and the many wonderful things that will happen because the new campus of St. Joseph Academy is now complete.

God Bless You All,

Ned Heiskell

UPDATE March 2007

New Campus Construction Underway

  The construction of our new campus is proceeding well.  The rains in January and February really slowed us down, but we have made up some of that time with the beautiful weather the past few weeks.  The first two buildings, although behind schedule will still be done in time for move-in during late June or early July.  Building A (the single story) has the following major tasks remaining: Insulation, drywall, exterior plaster (stucco), roof shingle installation, acoustical tile (ceiling installation), final wiring, final plumbing, final HVAC, painting, carpeting, door installation.  Building C (the two story) is a few weeks behind and needs the same work with the addition of some window installation, HVAC rough in, fire sprinkler rough in and elevator installation.

Construction of Building B was seriously delayed due to the rain.  The pad area where that building sits was super saturated with water and the dirt would not compact properly to allow us to build the foundation.  The dirt finally dried out last week and the pad is now compacted and the footing trenches have been dug.  The plumbers and electricians are putting their underground conduits in place and we hope to pour the perimeter foundation next week and the slab a week after that.  We were supposed to have the slab poured on February 15th so we are 6 to 8 weeks behind schedule.  It is still too early to tell whether we will get that building completed on time for September 2nd, but we are doing everything we can to make it!

Besides the building construction, there is still a lot of site work needed.  We expect to begin the waterline and storm drain construction in April.  This will be followed by new streets and sidewalks.  We will also be able to start work on the parking lot and field.  If all goes well, we should start to see major changes to the site in May and June as concrete gets poured, asphalt laid and landscaping installed.

The last big announcement is that we are planning a very special event to officially dedicate our new campus.  On August 23rd Bishop Cordileone has agreed to officiate at a Mass and Eucharistic Procession to bring our Lord to the new school.  The current plans are as follows.  We will start with mass at St. Marks Church, probably at 9:00 am.  When mass is complete, we will process on foot as a congregation (invitations will be sent to surrounding parishes, all faithful will be invited) from St. Marks to the new campus.  At the new campus we will have a proper ceremony (not sure of the details on this yet) to bless the new school.

Please continue to pray to St. Joseph for the success of our project.  There is a lot of work yet to be done.

- Ned Heiskell