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	Hire Sets in Motion Plan to Reuse School Krueger Launches Drive to Finance Community Center By Will Kilburn Boston Globe [Boston MA] April 29, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/29/hire_sets_in_motion_plan_to_reuse_school/ After nearly three years of operating as an all-volunteer organization, the Presentation School Foundation in Brighton took on its first full-time employee this month : executive director Steven Krueger , who will lead the group's efforts to turn the former Catholic elementary school into a community center. Krueger is well known to followers of the ongoing fallout from the Boston Archdiocese's clergy sex abuse scandal. In 2002, he was the founding executive director of the Catholic lay group Voice of the Faithful . He later helped an effort to reform statutes of limitations on sex crimes against minors, and worked with a Newton parish whose pastor was fired after he criticized the archdiocese. But Krueger, whose position is funded largely by the latest in a series of grants from the Boston Foundation, stresses the point that the foundation has moved beyond its beginnings as an organization of parents who had once hoped to keep the school open. "The foundation has no more connection to the Catholic church than it does to any other denomination," he said. "There are people who went to Presentation School and are Catholic, but the purpose is to build a secular community center." Krueger's first order of business will be raising the funds to purchase the building from the archdiocese, which halved its asking price, from $2 million to $1 million, last fall. So far, $180,000 has been raised, but foundation board chairman Kevin Carragee says he is confident that Krueger can get the job done. "He has experience with a start-up nonprofit, and he has considerable business experience, including raising money in venture capital," said Carragee , who said more than 30 people applied for the position. "We thought that that combination of skills was exactly what we needed." For his part, Krueger says he looks forward to the challenges and harnessing the collective energy of those in the neighborhood who have come forward in support. "This is a great American story, a story of community strength and values," he said. "It's literally being written before our very eyes, and I think that many people want to become a part of this story."
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