1. Our schools must embrace the evangelical mission of our Church in a full-throated, joyful way. We exist to form disciples of Jesus Christ!
Leadership, in particular, must be consistently on point here. The life of faith is not one of the “pillars” of the school, alongside other pillars like academics, the arts or athletics. It is the foundation upon which all the other pillars stand, the lens through which all else is focused. We must talk about it, establish rituals that help weld our purpose into everyone’s minds, and spend time honing our language to talk about our mission with eloquence and power. As an example, I’ve asked our choir to lead us in one stanza of “Lord Prepare Me (To Be A Sanctuary)” at our school masses, which we sing at the end of communion each week. To hear 770 kids sing “Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true. With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living, sanctuary, for you” is quite moving.
As part of our mission emphasis, we must be welcoming to all people of good will who desire an excellent education for their children, rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But our ecumenical outreach should not aim for the "lowest common denominator" to share in our Christian life together. Rather, we should practice our Catholic faith, with all of its quirky distinctiveness, in a robust and joyful way. When non-Catholic parents enroll their children in “Pope John Paul II High School” or “Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic Elementary School” they know what they are signing up for! They do so because they want a lively, authentic community of faith for their children. Let us welcome their participation in building joyful, faithful schools with us!
2. Our schools must demonstrate an unwavering commitment to the institutional Church, to the authority of its bishop and pastors, to the teachings and doctrines of the faith, to the diocese and to its policies and decisions. We are a ministry of the parish and/or diocese. If we drift from this, we lose our moorings and will quickly become indistinguishable from other private schools. Such is the sad history of countless schools and universities with Christian origins.
Most of us had this experience as children when we went to the ocean with our families: Our parents would establish a base camp with towels and chairs along the shore, and then we would go running out into the ocean, playing in the waves, splashing each other, completely oblivious to everything else. After 15 minutes or so, we’d hear our parents call “Come back!” and look up, startled that we were thirty yards down shore, swept along by currents that up until that point, we didn’t realize were there. How could we have known, since all of us were pulled down shore by the same currents? I once had a difficult meeting with a mother who was upset that we didn’t “respect” her daughter’s desire to dress in a boy’s uniform. I told her we loved her daughter, but ultimately, her disagreement was not with our school, but with our Church and its teachings on sexuality. Do we fully appreciate what a gift it is to be aligned with a “base camp” that helps us navigate these cultural waters?
3. On the flip side, bishops, superintendents and pastors must truly commit to the principle of subsidiarity (that things are best handled at the lowest level possible), forego a “template” style of management, and give principals and school councils the necessary space to create unique schools . The “diocesan school” should look very different from school to school, possibly with different yearly calendars, different operational hours, different curricular emphases, different teacher requirements, etc. as each strives to creatively serve its particular community. If all the diocesan schools run essentially the same programs, the less advantaged schools are forced to compete head to head with the more advantaged schools, to their detriment. They need a distinctive niche to be competitive! Why not Catholic Montessori schools? Classical Schools? Dual language? Year-round? Let's give schools the liberty to explore options. And yes, while everyone understands the importance of common diocesan policies to protect institutional liability, these policies should be written as parameters within which schools have freedom to operate, not as scripts written by lawyers that insist on sameness, dictate specifics, and eliminate pastoral judgment.
4. Similarly, we must fully embrace a market model that honors parents as the primary educators and is responsive to what parents want for their kids. The “we know best” leadership model is an anachronism that is not sustainable for the future, as parents have many options and are inclined to “vote with their feet." High school parents, for example, support study halls as an elective choice. They want ACT prep classes. They appreciate Driver’s Ed classes. Parents of athletes like folding weight-lifting into the regular school day so as to get year round training without juggling crazy after school (and sometimes before school!) schedules. They want a first tier A.P. program. They like having a healthy array of fine arts options. All of those things are doable with creative scheduling, but principals often encounter diocesan resistance to deliver on these parent desires. Again, that’s usually because dioceses are too often caught in the trap of template thinking, the belief that each constituent part must be roughly the same. If one high school does X and the other Y, the concern is that parents will compare them and complain that their school doesn’t do what another does. But in a free market environment, such comparisons are welcomed, as success in one institution challenges others to excel. We should encourage new ideas and experimentation in our schools!
I’m not advocating that our schools should be able to do as they please and expect our Church and diocesan school offices to rubber stamp! It is appropriate, for example, for a diocese to have common graduation requirements for its high schools and required minimal instructional time per subject for its elementary schools. For sure, our Church must insist our schools operate within the moral teachings and doctrines of our faith. There are also accreditation requirements relating to our academic programs, governance, and finances. But these are base requirements, and I think it’s unwise for diocesan offices to push for uniformity much beyond them. For the sake of our market viability, we need the flexibility to meet parents where they are and deliver where we can!
5. In the same way, principals and Boards should veer from imposing too many bureaucratic policies upon themselves, stripping themselves of the ability to respond to their challenges with creativity. Our daily life together must be founded on relationships, not on rules or policies. Particularly in reconciling differences and disciplining children, personalization is the key. If parents have issues with us, we should invite them to meet with us, face to face, to see if we can resolve their concerns. Sometimes we cannot, but the effort matters. Quoting policy won’t work. Email exchanges merely fuel anger. Yes, all schools must have disciplinary policies, but they should be written broadly. As tempting as it is to “pre-solve” problems by saying "For each transgression X, there is a Y punishment," or "X accumulated demerits =Y consequence," doing so means we end up forfeiting our creativity and pastoral judgment to do what is most effective for that child at that moment. There are a variety of considerations: the emotional maturity of the child, his or her level of contrition, the child's willingness or unwillingness to own his or her mistake, the level of external pressure which caused the student to act wrongly, whether another student was hurt, how influential that child is on his or her peers, the length of time since his or last incident, the anticipated level of support of (or lack of it) from the parents, whether or not the adults involved escalated or de-escalated the matter.
Our school once had a junior boy we were at wit’s end with. If placed within any auto-policy set of consequences, he would have been expelled a year earlier. I don’t remember what he did, but it was the final straw, and I called a meeting with him and his parents on Saturday morning to tell them it was time to leave. But on the way to school, praying about it, it didn’t feel right. His parents were a wreck, and I was pretty certain that expulsion would lead to the boy's complete unraveling. So when I met with his parents, I offered an alternative— and the parents gratefully agreed. I took the young man out to our school bus, drove the bus to my house, parked it in our driveway, then told him to clean and mop the inside, and wash and wax the outside, while I went in the house to be with my children. It was hot outside, and embarrassing for him, and I could see he was a little indignant. I told him he had the choice of doing a lousy job or refusing completely, but in both cases, I'd take that as his final decision to withdraw. After some initial wavering, he decided to do it. I gave him breaks, fed him lunch, and five hours later was able to praise him for a job well done. That turned out to be a break-through. No, he wasn’t perfect, but he began to care. A year later, he graduated, joined the Navy, got married and is now a father with two kids. We have to meet kids where they are--and they're in all different places! For one kid, getting a suspension may mean he gets to sleep in and watch TV all day. But for another kid with stronger parents, it may mean he'll do hard labor beginning at the crack of dawn.
Kids should be held accountable, and the consequences will need to sting to be effective. But in Catholic schools, punishments should "fit the child," not the "crime." The gospel command is that we leave the 99 to find the one. Once at a faculty meeting, a teacher wise-cracked, "But when the shepherd returns to the herd, he may find he only has 85 sheep left. Who tends to the 99?" I love hypothetical questions like that! I told him I thought Jesus might say, "I myself will shepherd them. As for you, go now, and rescue the one. "
Yes, sadly, in some cases we must expel a child. Not doing so may “enable” that child’s bad behavior, much like the spouse of an alcoholic who won’t throw the alcoholic out of the home and thereby allows that person to continue drinking, unchallenged. If, after creative attempts to discipline, a child is “hardening” in his or her attitudes and resisting the school’s efforts, it may be that expulsion is the only way that get that child’s attention. And when a student is threat to the health and safety of other students, as would be the case, for example, with a kid selling drugs, he or she must be expelled immediately. But in both cases, the child's fate is not decided on by a formula; rather, it's what’s best for the child or the safety of other kids.
6. We must move to a tuition model that minimizes the “gap” between tuition and actual per pupil costs. Our parishes, for the most part, can’t shoulder the difference--they are as strapped as we are. To hire and retain excellent teachers and leaders, our schools must have the resources to pay sustainable wages, and we must make the case to parents that the investment (not sacrifice!) in their child’s future is worth it! I believe our tuitions should be aimed at mid-market rates, at minimum, coupled with more generous financial aid for families who cannot reach those tuition levels.
7. We must also build a robust advancement program which encourages a culture of philanthropy among all of its constituents. At minimum, schools should have an annual fund that appeals to every constituent to help fund the gap between tuition and per pupil costs. But going deeper, I have found wealthy people are more enthusiastic in their philanthropy if they know their gift supports the ability of particular students to attend our schools, rather than giving to a “general fund.” So at St. Michael we started encouraging permanent scholarships (named after a loved one) if families were willing to give us an initial gift of 25K (for a single half tuition scholarship) and 50k (for two half tuition scholarships), together with the commitment to replenish the corpus back to those levels or higher every year. We then hosted a scholarship breakfast in early May, where the donors and the student recipients would sit together, along with the child's parents, eat together, and then take pictures together. After 3-4 years of supporting the scholarship, I could then approach the donor about making provisions in their will that would continue to support this scholarship in perpetuity upon their death.
8. We must embrace the grand “both-and” of our Tradition, refusing to allow ourselves to be sucked into the narrow, polarizing “either-or” of the culture wars that divide us. So yes, our kids should be encouraged to participate in Marian devotions, in Eucharistic adoration, and they should be taught the great hymns of yesteryear. But they should also sing contemporary praise music and be exposed to the beauty and consistency of our Church’s social teachings—why, for example, our Church is against both abortion AND capital punishment and how those teachings square with "just war" teachings, or why the Church favors progressive taxes over regressive. George Weigel calls this openness to both our past and present the “ecumenism of time.” The anchor should be the “source and summit” of our faith life, the Mass, which I believe should be part of our schools' weekly schedule.
9. We must build safe and secure schools, with well designed protocols for vetting all those who work with our students, both in our hiring, supervision in classrooms and in our day to day operations. We should consider security fencing, webcams, auto-door locks, instant background checks for all visitors and the like as investments that protect children, relieve anxiety, and secure the long term future of our schools. The world has changed in this regard--and not for the better. Safety is now one of the top 2-3 concerns of current and prospective families.
10. Finally, we must make an optimistic, enthusiastic commitment to be excellent in all things—the life of faith, academics, the arts, athletics—and any other endeavor we take on. “Good enough” can never be good enough! And let us be explicit in reminding our communities that excellence in one program doesn't take away the potential for excellence in another, as if the school were a fixed size “pie.” A big “slice” for athletics, as often feared, doesn’t necessarily mean a smaller slice for academics or the arts. The whole pie can get bigger!
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Let us try and run our schools this way, then place our prayers and full trust in God’s providence and grace to sustain them, remembering they are His, not ours, and that our task is to be faithful. If we can do that, we can release ourselves of the anxiety and worry about our future.
His will be done!
