Keep the Momentum Going

The 2024-2025 GRACE Annual Appeal is in full swing!

Your gifts provide vital support to the more than 2,400 students enrolled in our schools. With your help, we can continue to provide an education that nurtures both academic and spiritual growth. Donations can be sent to the GRACE Development Office at 1822 Riverside Dr., Green Bay, WI 54301, or made online at gracesystem.org/giving/donate-now.

Thank you for helping us build a brighter future! 

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

Thank you to our principal of Holy Family Catholic School, Mrs. Sharkey!

Grounded in our Catholic faith, the Holy Family Catholic School community will educate our
students to reach their academic potential while inspiring a passion to be active, lifelong learners. Through Catholic teaching and global awareness, students will learn the great importance of being compassionate, loving, and understanding citizens.

Learn more at: www.holyfamilgreenbay.com.

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

GRACE (Green Bay Area Catholic Education) is pleased to announce the appointment of Nate Tackaberry as the new Executive Director of Advancement, starting October 7, 2024. Nate brings over 15 years of experience in leadership, development, and relationship cultivation, including a successful career in non-profit fundraising and marketing. In his new role, Mr. Tackaberry will lead advancement efforts for GRACE, with a focus on strengthening partnerships, enhancing donor engagement, and driving long-term financial sustainability for the system and its nine Catholic schools focusing on our highest priorities and needs.

Most recently, Mr. Tackaberry served as Regional Philanthropy Officer for the American Red Cross. His extensive experience also includes five years at St. Norbert College as Development Officer. Nate’s leadership extends beyond fundraising; he has demonstrated a commitment to the GRACE community through roles such as serving on the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School Advisory Council. His combination of passion for Catholic education, professional experience, and dedication to mission-driven work will be invaluable in his new role at GRACE. 

In addition to his development expertise, Mr. Tackaberry holds an MBA from the Schneider School of Business and Economics at St. Norbert College, which he completed in May of 2024. He is also a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Parish. Nate and his wife, Katy, have two children who attend GRACE schools, underscoring his deep commitment to the GRACE mission. 

“We are excited to welcome Nate to our leadership team,” said Kim Desotell, President of GRACE. “His extensive experience in development, leadership, and building community partnerships will be a tremendous asset to our mission at GRACE. With his passion and expertise, I am confident that Nate will help us reach new milestones and expand opportunities for those we are privileged to serve.”

“I’m elated to be joining GRACE in this role,” said Mr. Tackaberry. “Not only due to the privilege of working with this remarkable team, but also the blessing to support such a meaningful and important organization. I very much look forward to our work ahead, along with the opportunity to meet and converse with many GRACE stakeholders in the near future.” 

In his new capacity, Mr. Tackaberry will be responsible for leading strategic fundraising initiatives, building key donor relationships, and supporting the long-term vision of GRACE as a leading system of Catholic education in the state of Wisconsin. The timing of this aligns with the upcoming retirement of our longstanding GRACE Director of Development, Lisa Niemuth, who will be stepping into planned retirement on January 3, 2025. 

Please join us in welcoming Nate Tackaberry to GRACE as we look forward to his leadership in advancing our mission of providing high-quality and faith-filled education to our students and families. 

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

At Holy Family Catholic School, students thrive and strive towards the best versions of themselves. Staff and families support one another as a family and generations of students return to share the experience with their children. We’ve put together a video highlighting this!

To explore more about what makes us unique, browse our website.

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

The 2024 GRACE: Gold Summer Camp season concluded at the end of July with a total of 86 students participating in camp sessions! The camp was created in 2019 with the goal of offering children a faith-filled option for the summer months that also provided quality educational experiences to campers and families. This goal is accomplished each year through the hard work of the amazing team of GRACE teachers who dedicate their time to developing and leading successful camp sessions.

This year, GRACE: Gold was held at Holy Family Catholic School with the support of St. Agnes Parish. Camp sessions were open to children in Grades Preschool through 8 with the most popular camps occurring at the Kindergarten, Grades 1-2, and Grades 3-5 age levels. A number of new-to-GRACE students attended camp this year as well with the goal to make new friends and meet GRACE teachers before the school year even started! 

New classes are offered each year to ensure camp offerings appeal to each child’s unique interests and to focus on age appropriate themes and skills that students will be able to take back to the classroom. In addition, it is GRACE: Gold’s aim to keep numbers at 15-20 students per camp class, depending on the age level of the class. This helps provide smaller class sizes and also maintains lower teacher-to-student ratios, ensuring the best camp experience for students and teachers. 

The camp teachers are the rock stars of the program, diligently planning for and engaging students in fun and meaningful sessions. The “Book Cooks” class, taught by Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School teacher, Jessica Johnson, was popular with students in particular. Cooking and baking classes are always a hit with students at any grade level! Other standout classes were “Pickleball Champs,” taught by Father Allouez Catholic School teacher Malynn Tarczewski, “Alphabet Fun,” taught by Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School teacher Kassandra Baeten, and “Tech Trek,” taught by GRACE Tech Team member, Samantha Skifton. In addition, Wisconsin Dairy Promotions came in each week on Fridays to provide a healthy dairy treat and to teach students about the dairy and farming industry in our state.

Next year, the goal is to host full-day camp sessions again for families. This means campers will have class options to choose from that run from 8 AM-3 PM each day. Camp Director, Laura Blicharz, also stated the goal is to return to a four-week camp schedule instead of the three weeks that occurred this year. With a full-day camp schedule, Before and After School Care will also be an option again for parents and families. GRACE plans to have an even higher enrollment number next year, so keep an eye out for information on GRACE: Gold camp registration in the Spring!

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

By Matt Riebe, Director of Athletics and Activities, GRACE

I am honored to have been welcomed into the GRACE community since I started in my role in November 2023. This brand-new position to spearhead system-wide athletics and activities resulted from efforts involving key focus areas of the GRACE Strategic Plan. My role at GRACE is focused on helping communication and collaboration between GRACE Schools and to the greater community. GRACE is blessed with so many amazing individuals who give their time and talents to creating positive learning experiences to help our students grow and enjoy being a part of something bigger than themselves. To start, I have focused on identifying needs and supporting athletics programs, but my aim is to work on growing GRACE school activities in the near future.

My first weeks in my role revolved around ingraining myself at each GRACE school community. I met with the principals and athletic directors at each school to gather perspective on what extracurricular opportunities are currently available, common challenges faced by each school, and ideas to help build system-wide athletics at GRACE. My work has focused on creating avenues of communication for site athletic directors, booster clubs, and parish staff to work together and share knowledge between other GRACE schools and communicate effectively. 

The end goal is to find a way to communicate effectively and to cultivate environments that lead to positive experiences for students. We are working to increase participation in athletics at each school and building bridges across the system to open opportunities to play as many sports that may not be available at every school. We want to showcase the great things our schools are doing for students.

The connection with our CatholicLink partners, St. Norbert College and Notre Dame Academy, has opened up tremendous experiences for our students. We are creating amazing experiences for our students to interact and learn from high school and college student-athletes. Through this partnership, all GRACE students can attend St. Norbert College and Notre Dame Academy athletics events for free! Student-athletes from both schools are eager to give back and we are opening up opportunities for some great experiences for GRACE students.

I am very excited for the future of athletics and activities and I hope you join in on the fun!

Accomplishments

• Met with administrators at every level of athletics at each GRACE School to better understand the system, share knowledge, and provide support & guidance
• Hosted 7th and 8th grade basketball and track and field championships at St. Norbert College
• Formed a booster club at Chesterton Academy to help guide growing athletics programs and engage the school community
• Created a communication hub for all athletics seasons on gracesystem.org
• Established partnerships with area organization to supplement referee pools for games
• Met with CatholicLink partners to set up numerous collaborations such as volunteer programs, event passes to SNC/NDA games, and facility rentals
• Held an archery clinic for middle and high school students at St. John the Baptist, which included students from every GRACE school
• Guided the Holy Family Booster Club in filling their athletic director role and served as their interim athletic director to support the leadership transition

Future goals

• Growth of activity offerings and create collaborations between schools
• Introducing the GRACE Athletics Handbook to better communicate common policies and showcase opportunities for students in all sports
• Fostering athletics participation and forming independent teams at St. John Paul II and St. Thomas More
• Seek out opportunities to play other Catholic schools in our diocese

At Chesterton Academy, our Catholic Classical high school, athletics and activities have started to grow with boys and girls basketball and golf teams that finished their second seasons, as well as a chess team that finished in the top ten in the state this spring. We will be starting cross country and track & field programs starting next year, guided by the newly-created booster club to help build the necessary structure to support students and create strong high school programs.

This is an excerpt from the Spring 2024 GRACE Newsletter. Check out the whole newsletter by clicking the button below!

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

By Samantha Skifton, Technology Integration Specialist, GRACE

Artificial Intelligence. If you read those words and immediately think that it can’t be good for the future of education, many would likely agree. Artificial Intelligence (AI) hit the world like a tidal wave in November of 2022 thanks to ChatGPT, a chat-based platform that can instantly generate text. There are a few common misconceptions we would like to clarify. First, AI is not a new creation. It has been part of the technological world since 1950, albeit in different forms. Second, you use AI almost daily and might not realize it. Do you ask Siri or Alexa to play your favorite songs or to schedule a reminder? Have you ever Googled something? Has your digital map recommended the shortest route? And don’t get me started on personalized ads! These daily tasks all use AI to some degree.

GRACE’s Technology Services team was tasked with researching AI at the start of the school year. Immediately hundreds of questions posed threats to how we view education. Did students need to hand write essays? Was this something that students or staff should even use? The questions didn’t stop, and neither did we. We knew that AI couldn’t be brushed under the rug for another day. Our investigation started exactly where it should: with our faith. Pope Francis has been addressing AI since 2016, and throughout that time his opinion hasn’t changed: AI is a gift from God which needs to serve our human potential and will challenge our teaching methods, however we are called to use AI morally and ethically to promote critical thinking (Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to Participants in the “Minerva Dialogues”, March 2023). 

Our focus became finding AI tools that were created specifically for educators. These tools save our teachers something precious: time. AI provides an almost instantaneous digital assistant to our teachers. The teacher who used to spend three hours creating review materials for students can now create a starting point in seconds. The first-year teacher who wants to create a project based on the novel Wonder has a multitude of ideas in minutes. The teacher who wants to give each student a personalized Christmas story can save hours of time creating them.

There are a few things we would like to affirm. We discourage teachers from distributing AI materials without first editing and making materials their own. AI is a starting point not the final draft. The use of ChatGPT is discouraged for all because, quite honestly, there are better tools available. As for students, the expectation is that their assigned work be original, not AI generated.  Blocking or banning use is almost impossible, instead the focus within the classroom is exhibiting academic honesty while demonstrating skill mastery.

We have before us a rare opportunity to pioneer an ethical and moral use of AI for education grounded in our GRACE mission. Our teachers will focus on utilizing AI to enhance academic rigor, professionalism, effectiveness, and evangelization while striving for excellence.

This is an excerpt from the Spring 2024 GRACE Newsletter. Check out the whole newsletter by clicking the button below!

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

By Deacon Dan Gray, Middle School Teacher, Holy Family Catholic School

On the Sunday after Easter, we hear the familiar story of Jesus appearing to his disciples in the locked room. Thomas is not present and when he returns and is told of the encounter, he reacts with disbelief. He asks for proof. He wants to see and feel and hear it directly before he will buy the story. Later, when Jesus appears and invites Thomas to touch his wounds, Thomas’ heartfelt and humble response is “my Lord and My God!”. What powerful words! Thomas recognizes the real presence of Jesus in his midst. 

Thomas is often disparaged for his initial skepticism about the reality of Jesus fully and physically present. His name has become synonymous with disbelief: a “Doubting Thomas”. I find this a bit unfair, why should he have believed such a far fetched story? He knew Jesus was dead. He knew that he would never be able to encounter him again. And yet it happened. The real presence of Jesus Christ in front of him, body, blood, soul and divinity. How lucky Thomas was to have this encounter! This very personal physical encounter with the one that he now knew for sure was God present. How interesting it would have been to observe this encounter. To see the joy on the face of Thomas and to see the reaction of the other disciples. 

What does this story mean for us today? I think it is particularly appropriate to contemplate when we realize the struggle that many are having in recognizing that Jesus is physically present for them. We hear disturbing statistics about the number of Catholics who are having difficulty understanding the reality of Jesus truly present in the Eucharist. While it is not good to read these statistics, I think they give Catholic educators a unique opportunity. 

This summer, I will have the privilege of representing Catholic educators from the Green Bay Diocese and particularly GRACE at the National Eucharistic Revival in Indianapolis. It promises to be a time of learning and energizing and renewal. I am excited to be able to bring back to this Diocese what I encounter. I am excited to be a part of an event that is wholly focused on the reality of Christ present in the Eucharist, and I cannot wait for the opportunity to help others understand what Jesus has given us. I cannot wait to share this experience with our students, our faculty and staff, our supporters, and the members of my home parishes of St. James in Cooperstown and St. Joseph Kellenersville. 

In the end, my real hope is that when each of us encounters Christ’s present body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist, we not only say amen, yes I believe. I hope that we will also echo the words of Thomas: My Lord and My God.

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

Dear Members of the GRACE Community:

Warm spring greetings during this beautiful time of Easter, growth and reflection. I am filled with gratitude for the blessings that continue to enrich our beloved GRACE community. 

One of the cornerstones of our mission is to ensure that our schools are beacons of faith and knowledge, open to all those who seek the light of Catholic education. With the support of our 23 GRACE-affiliated parishes, we are steadfast in our commitment to welcoming every child into our classrooms regardless of background or circumstance. Together, we embrace our community knowing that it is through unity that we truly thrive to reach the kingdom- our ultimate yearning. 

The impact of a GRACE education extends far beyond the walls of our schools. By providing more students with access to quality education, we not only foster academic excellence but pave the way for brighter futures and boundless opportunities. Our commitment to nurturing a thriving community around us is rooted in the belief that Catholic education is the cornerstone of our students’ futures. 

I am delighted to report that our enrollment remains strong, a testament to the unwavering dedication of our staff and families and the enduring appeal of Catholic education in greater Green Bay. With robust and thriving schools, our students are provided not only with excellent academic opportunities but also with vibrant social experiences that help shape them into well-rounded individuals. Each child brings a unique perspective to our community enriching our classrooms with a tapestry of personalities and ideas. 

A steady enrollment also serves as the bedrock of our fiscal practices, ensuring the stability and sustainability of our schools for generations to come. Through the support of our growing community, we are empowered to uphold the traditions and teachings of our Catholic faith in partnership with our parents and parishes, nurturing the hearts and minds of our students. 

As we celebrate our successes, let us also cherish the bonds of friendship and unity that are forged within our GRACE family. Together, parents and educators alike form a supportive network that cultivates our beautiful community and creates a sense of belonging and lasting friendships for our students that endures long after graduation. 

I extend my deepest gratitude to each and every member of our GRACE community for your unwavering support and dedication to our mission. Together, let us continue to uphold the values of faith, excellence, and community that define us, inspiring future generations to shine brightly in the light of God’s love. 

With prayers, peace and warmest regards as we enter into these final days of the academic year!

Kimberly A. Desotell

President, GRACE 

This is an excerpt from the Spring 2024 GRACE Newsletter. Check out the whole newsletter by clicking the button below!

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.

The latest GRACE Spring 2024 newsletter is now available to read! This issue highlights the Father Allouez Catholic School Faith Fair, puts a spotlight on newcomer Father Adam Bradley, a thoughtful reflection from Deacon Dan, an update on GRACE athletics from new Director of Athletics and Activities, Matt Riebe, and even more!

Check it out by clicking the button below.

Holy Family Catholic School is part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. It is a private Catholic school serving Preschool and Elementary through 8th grade (PK3-8) with open enrollment. Holy Family provides an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually.

The best way to learn more about HFS is to visit! Schedule a tour here.