by Delilah Reyes ’26

Can you tell me about how the recruiting process works? 

For our local grammar schools which are the catholic grammar schools in the Archdioceses in Chicago, every year we visit the school to do a half hour classroom visit—–so all the high school reps, like myself or Ms.Facen,  would go in and do a 30 min presentation, hand out materials and much more! As far as our public school,  the recruiting process is kinda hit or miss. Sometimes we get invited to a highschool fair where we are allowed to talk to the students, sometimes their families. We also try to schedule with the local counselors  from these public schools and hopefully develop relationships with them where they allow us to come in the classrooms, or at least drop off materials. I often send a flier to them that might distribute to their 7th and 8th grade families. Also, other local organizations will often sponsor highschool fairs where we set up a table and bring our materials, families come and ask questions..

How did this year’s recruiting go? How many kids have tested so far? Which schools are we getting so far? 

AWESOME! So far we have 47 kids who have tested, which is many more kids than we did at this time last year , and I believe the number is only going to grow.  It’s truly been team effort because it hasn’t only been me going on this visits– Roni has been going out to a lot of schools to talk, Coach Moore and I think Mr. Sanchez went out a couple of times as well. It’s really about the relationships we establish and build, so for example Roni has some great relationships with many grammar school principals,  and I often talk to the counselors or with a lot of the parents so that we build those connections. We also try and promote ourselves and our open houses and test days on social media. So I think more and more we are starting to get noticed and are seeing a lot of students pick us over the other schools as their first choice.  So we’re getting a lot of kids from Our Lady Of Guadalupe, St.John De La Salle, St Benedict the African, Annunciata, and as always Immaculate Conception. 

How do you feel about the directions of the school enrollment wise? 

Good! Our seniors are the smallest class. I think there’s like 32 in the seniors class. We have 45 in our freshmen class 44 or 43 juniors/sophomores..if you noticed we were heavily bottom loaded. So at the top we’re going to graduate those 32 but we’re going to bring 50 or more. Our enrollment is going to increase. I’m excited about the fact were bringing more programs for the students here at SFDS 

Anything else you want to add? 

I’m just excited especially for this year because I’ve been seeing us grow even more. I’ve been seeing the hard work of Roni and the staff/faculty. I’m just so happy to see others happy!