Dear Benefactors and Friends of St. Al’s,

I am happy to write you as we progress in the 2017 Academic Year. We began on January 4, which seemed too early to begin after the holiday festivities. We are very happy to begin this year under the direction of a new and very experienced principal, Mr. Michael Kimotho. Michael joined us in early December, while we were on school vacation, in order to be ready to lead St. Al’s forward with much vigor. I can see that Michael’s commitment has inspired our teachers and students with renewed energy to move forward successfully. Welcome, Michael!

Fr.  Terry Charlton, SJ

The Kenyan Ministry of Education has initiated some new measures that have affected us. Sadly, during the last few years, there had been a good deal of cheating on the qualifying exams that our seniors take during the last month of their high school tenure, and much of the cheating took place at the more elite schools in Kenya. Stringent controls were put in place in 2016 that largely eliminated the cheating. But exams were graded in a very different way that makes it difficult to compare the 2016 results with the results of the previous years. Virtually all schools registered a drop in their overall results. At St. Al’s, after achieving a mean grade of C+ on this exam for the last five years, in 2016, we attained a C Plain. Nevertheless, we had twenty-four of our seniors who qualified for subsidized studies at government universities, more than our previous high of 2015 when twenty-one students qualified. This result provides a good comparison of how our graduates are continuing to progress in relationship to graduates elsewhere.

We are happy to find solid stability among our teaching staff. Among the 17 teachers, we had only one new hire for this year, a replacement for Deacon Ken Ogot, S.J., who taught Chemistry for one year before going on for further studies.

I want to express our gratitude for your support in so many ways, including prayers and encouragement. Your financial support is, of course, critical; and without it we could not go on. Thanks to many of you who have renewed your sponsorship of one or more of our students, especially when the student whom you were sponsoring has graduated and you are invited to transition to a new student. We are putting more controls in place to ensure that you are notified in a timely way if the student you are sponsoring would leave St. Al’s.

We want to continue to place before you our capital campaign to raise money for our dormitory buildings. Please consider a gift, whether small, medium or large. In addition to appeals to our friends, we are continuing to reach out to new potential donors to help fund this project, including foundations and the US government.

Please consider coming for our St. Al’s Pilgrimage, this June, and join us for our 2017 annual celebration of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Day. Experience our school and how Africa celebrates. Information on the pilgrimage can be downloaded here.

We pray for all of you in the hope of the blessings and many gifts of life for you and your loved ones.

Sincerely yours,

Fr. Terry Charlton, SJ

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