The Future of Catholic Schools: Ten Essential Traits

Will our parish and diocesan Catholic schools survive? Many have not over the last few decades and many will not in the decades to come. As a person whose life's work has been attending, teaching in or leading Catholic schools, that's a sobering, depressing thought. 

But the future of our schools is not a 'fait accompli!' Much will depend on the principles we live by, how we perceive ourselves, and how our schools are managed by both school and diocesan leaders. We have real agency in how the future unfolds! Here’s my take on ten traits which will be essential for us to both survive and prosper: 

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.

We also appealed to older Catholic families in our parishes through a “Guardian Angel” campaign, where we invited them to become “guardian angels” of younger Catholic families,  “paying the gift of their Catholic education forward.” Once a year,  students in uniform, with a advisory council representative or administrator, would speak after communion in all the Catholic parishes.  GA gifts went into a separate fund from the school’s accounts, and if Catholic families needed additional funds beyond what a school’s financial aid program could provide, they were encouraged to meet with their pastor to ask for a “Guardian Angel” supplement. The pastor would then talk with me about the amount (since I had the family’s financial needs assessment as part of their financial aid app), and once we decided on the amount, we would withdraw the money from the GA fund and credit the student’s account. Pastors loved it, as the GA fund allowed them to be generous and supportive of their families without having to debit parish funds, and the families receiving the monies understood it truly as a gift from the church and its donors. That appeal was very successful,  generating between 100-150k in gifts each year. And as a further bonus, the Guardian Angel appeal was a wonderful  “lead gift” identifier of affluent, generous people who care about our schools. I was able to develop meaningful relationships with many of them, where previously we had no connection. One such GA donor gave his entire estate to us upon his 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! 

Improving Salaries!

How can we pay our teachers better and at the same time, make our schools more affordable to  our families? I believe this is the central dilemma facing our schools just about everywhere.

But rather than viewing these as opposing tensions, I believe we can use one to help the other— if we structure our advancement program correctly. 

Here’s how I tried to do that when I was principal of St. Michael in Fairhope, AL:

Whatever our actual total financial aid gifts were each year—after all the dust settled— we listed it as a line item under expense. On the revenue side, we coded tuition as if everyone was paying full freight.

At St. Michael, that aid number was about $600,000, given to 30% of our 350 students.

I also had a line item under income for our annual fund appeal at $250,000. I considered this our "ordinary” philanthropic income and tasked our advancement director to raise this each year.  If we were successful with our annual fund, together with tuition, fees and subsidies, I could offer our teachers modest raises each year. That was our “baseline.” 

But if I wanted to make real headway on salaries—which I believe is THE challenge for our schools—I needed to spend my limited time as school principal on "extraordinary”  philanthropy.  What is the most powerful way to do that? 

I believe it's by asking wealthy Catholic families to give students "the gift of a Catholic education." I have found they're receptive to appeal that if they are convinced the money is going directly to families for this purpose.  

In other words, my aim was to begin to offset the 600K number listed as an expense for financial aid with gifts and scholarships. 

We did that in three ways:

First, we asked older Catholic parishioners to consider becoming  “Guardian Angels” for younger Catholic families, inviting them to “pay the gift of their Catholic education forward.” Every August we would take kids (in uniform) and talk at the end of masses to ask for pledges or a donation to help families. 

The money would go into a “Guardian Angel” fund available for the next year. If parents applied for financial aid, I would give them what I could through the school’s budget. But if they needed more, they went to their pastor, who could then ask me to withdraw GA funds and apply it to their student account. I didn’t spend that money—only the pastors did. 

The pastors appreciated it, because they were able to help their families directly, without tapping into parish money. They were the "good guys," and I was happy with that. It also opened them to us making that appeal each year in their churches. Pastors are rightfully hesitant to see donation dollars leave their parish for other causes! 

Older Catholics responded generously. I didn’t transfer money into a student’s account until I received a thank you from the student  to their anonymous guardian angel, and then I would send that letter to the donor. The donors thus knew their money wasn’t going to an administrative “black hole.” Each year we would receive about 150K in GA donations. When we withdrew money from this account, we would list that "income" in our operations. I never used all of it in a single year, figuring the appeal might become less successful down the line, perhaps with even a long term goal of morphing it into an endowment fund.  When I left the school in 2022, the number had grown to about 300K.  

The second way we offset the financial aid number was through recurring scholarships. For a minimum gift of 25K and a commitment to re-supply the gift to that level each year, we would offer a deserving student a half tuition scholarship named after a loved one (see here: https://stmichaelchs.org/scholarships-to-st-michael). These were roughly 5k each. I would ask the family to restore the fund that by 5K each year, minimum. Or, a family could “endow” a scholarship that paid a 5K scholarship if they made a gift for100K. I placed these gifts in a Catholic foundation account and anticipated a 5% yearly return.

In early May we would host a “scholarship breakfast,” inviting both the donor families, the student and the students’ parents to meet each other. I would say a few words about each scholarship and the person for whom it was named. Hearing those words about a loved one, and meeting the child they were helping in that loved one's name meant a lot to our donors. It also gave the recipient a chance to say thank you face to face!

Finally, we sought legacy gifts aimed at assisting students with financial aid. The largest came from a donor whom I met originally as a Guardian Angel donor. (I wasn't smart enough to understand this when we first started the GA program, but it turned out to give me fantastic “leads” on people who were supportive of our schools,  open to the idea of creating family scholarships and possibly open to a legacy gift.) His gift to us upon his death endowed ten half tuition scholarships each year

Sum total, after six years as a school, we were offsetting the 600k of financial aid with almost 250K of scholarship or GA income each year, which really allowed us to do more for our teachers. Alas, not all of that went to them, as other needs arose. But it helped a great deal!

I don’t presume this “template” works for every school. As the expression goes, “Once you know ONE Catholic school, you know…one Catholic school.” I do think the Guardian Angel appeal could  have traction elsewhere, as the piety of “guardian angels” appeals to an older generation of Catholics, and I believe connects to an altruistic instinct to pass on the gift they have received from their Catholic schooling. 

The fella who endowed the ten scholarships was an older man, in his 80’s, and had difficulty standing. When he called me to his home and told me of his intent to give St. Michael everything he possessed upon his death, I got choked up, and asked him why he was doing that.

I will never forget his response. He rose to his feet, a little wobbly, but with fire in his eyes, and said, “When I went to St. Joseph elementary school, my parents paid the sisters five dollars a month for tuition. When I went to the McGill Institute (high school), they paid the brothers one hundred dollars a year. Those schools changed my life! It’s PAYBACK time!”

In summary: Aim your efforts to raise extraordinary gifts at financial aid. It will give you the best means to pay your teachers more substantially.  

It works! 

Five Contrarian Views Regarding Catholic Schools

We have operated our schools with certain assumptions that I believe no longer help us—indeed, holding onto them may even be hurting us. 

Here are a five, with my brief comments:

“Our tuitions should be low, consistent with the gospel mandate to protect the least among us.”

A noble sentiment, but we have a competing obligation to pay our teachers a just wage, and if we don’t, we won’t be able to sustain their long term commitment, to the detriment of our mission and our competitiveness. Better to aim our tuitions at mid-market rates and then assist our most vulnerable families with financial aid. 

“Diocesan schools should be very similar, with the same calendar, roughly similar times, the same curriculum, teacher requirements, etc.”

Insisting so only makes our under-resourced schools less competitive—why wouldn’t parents drive a few extra minutes to the school offering the same program with better resources? Instead, we should give these schools a fighting chance by encouraging them to offer unique programs: Why not dual-language? Year round? Classical? Extended day? Diocesan central offices should view themselves as laboratories for innovation, not as regulatory agencies to protect diocesan liability. 

“We should pay our teachers according to a strict pay scale based on degrees and years of experience.”

This virtually guarantees we are under-paying our best teachers and overpaying others. I haven’t used a strict salary scale in twenty years. I use benchmark numbers—for example, I might say 45K for a first year teacher with a B.A., but consider a range of plus or minus five thousand off that benchmark depending on how difficult it is to fill that position and how competitive the candidate or important to the life of the school. 

“Principals should protect and defend our least gifted teachers from our most demanding parents.”

Principals should defend teachers when they are right, not when they’re wrong or because they’re mediocre and need us as advocates. Of course, even our best teachers can be off their game for a while due to difficult circumstances, like a death in the family, an issue in their marriage, or health issues. Those are temporary circumstances and the community will have to trust the principal. But our first obligation as principals is to our kids and families. Often, our parents are rightfully upset about a mediocre teacher. That doesn’t mean we take a public position against that teacher, but behind  the scenes we should give these teachers a specific improvement plan. If they can’t hit those marks, we must let them go, sooner than later. 

“Principals must do what they think best, independent of what parents think or want.”

While it is true that the mission of the school takes precedence over any one’s preferences, a principal who discounts parent preferences leads foolishly. Yes, I understand that parental love can skew objectivity. But I’m not talking here about specific situations involving someone’s child as much as what the parents hope and dream about the school more generally. Do they want us to invest more in our athletic programs? In a fence to protect their kids? Is there a general consensus on a coach or teacher? We must listen to our parents and deliver where we can. “Parents are the primary educators” isn’t just nice talk. It means they are partners with us. 

The Future of Our Schools

 

Imagine the following:

You’re a Corporate Turn-around Specialist, hired by a national company to save it from insolvency. Here’s what your looking at:

• In 1960, the company had approximately 13,000 franchises around the country and a customer base of 5.2 million.

• By 2000, those numbers had fallen off precipitously: 8600 franchises, with only 2.6 million customers.

• Today there are just less than 6,000 franchises and 1.7 million customers.

What’s driving the decline? You track four fundamental causes:

-In 1960, this company was one of the few privately held companies in its field. Over the last decades, many new privately supported ventures and new public initiatives have increased competition.

-Prior to 1960, the company was able to pull its best employees from a training center that didn’t charge the company for its training. Now the company must employ independent contractors who demand higher wages and who must be trained at company expense.

-Each franchise must invest heavily in buildings and infrastructure to deliver its product. Unfortunately, changing demographics now leave many stores in neighborhoods with those unable to afford their product.

-Most troubling of all, a cultural shift has pulled potential customers away from the company’s core product. 

So, Mr. or Mrs. Turnaround Specialist, what do you recommend?

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Ouch! Of course I am talking about Catholic schools. But I find it helpful to step back and pretend, for a moment, this was just any other business, facing these trends. What on earth would a turn around expert recommend?

One thing he or she would NOT recommend: tinkering! Marginal improvements (newer tech, better P.D., improved fundraising, etc.) won’t get to root causes.

The reality is our schools are run separately by dioceses, so there is no "CEO" at the top of the hierarchy than can issue directives for all our schools. But I believe a turn-around specialist would make these fundamental recommendations, applicable to all dioceses:

1. Schools serving our most disadvantaged students will continue to close. Rather than allow this kind of Darwinian evolution to continue without any planning, dioceses must make hard choices and decide which few of these schools it can truly support and then go “all in” with these few. The parish model will not work—they must be supported by the whole church as a measure of its historical commitment to the poor. 

2. The K-8, 9-12 model is not competitive vs. K-12 schools, except for the wealthiest parish schools. K12 privates leverage the strength of their athletic programs, facilities, lab facilities, advancement and admission offices, etc. to offer more value than our stand alone K8’s can provide. We will need to compete more often as K12’s.

3. Our schools will need to adopt a “college model” for funding, increasing  tuitions and financial aid considerably. We will not be able to sustain excellent teachers unless they can afford to support themselves and their families. They cannot do so at 40, 50 or 60K a year.

4. Principal and leadership salaries must increase dramatically. We will not have strong schools without smart, creative and confident leaders. Programs like Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education bring young teachers into our schools who fit this profile, but most leave within five years because they can’t afford to raise families. That kind of “talent bleed” will kill us! At minimum, if X = the  avg salary of teachers, principals should make 2X or even 2.5X. Heads of NAIS schools make an average of 4.5X!

5. Schools must be focused on their fundamental mission to create disciples, fully aligned with their Church, staffed by joyful, practicing people of faith, with aspirational goals for all of their students to become saints and scholars! Any “mission-drift” to be all things to all people or compromises in staffing or goal-setting due to expediency are cancerous to this vision.

Will these five recommendation reverse things? They'll help! In some situations, maybe not. But the old paradigms must change for us to have a chance. May God give us the creativity and courage to embrace the challenges ahead!

A No-Cost, High Impact School Makeover (Part II)

(This is a continuation of a three part series on how we can use language to "make-over" our school. It is from part of my talk at the NCEA Convention )

3. Our language should reflect the call and challenge of the gospel! Our culture panders to kids! It tells them they’re not capable of scholarship, so it inflates grades. It doesn’t believe they’re capable of chastity or virtue, so it preaches “safe sex.” It suggests they cannot handle being told they’re not as athletic or as talented as someone else, so everyone gets a trophy. And the result? Kids are utterly bored. And even worse?  They begin to believe these things about themselves. 

Truth is, kids want to be challenged. There was a sidewalk just outside my office at St. Michael. It was the middle of July, in Fairhope AL just off the Mobile Bay, and the temperature was 90 degrees, with 90 percent humidity—the usual! Our cross country team was out practicing, running laps, running by my window as I watched the. Kids ran by, two by two, dripping in sweat, red faced. And they were all….smiling. They knew they were doing something difficult that few people could do. And they were proud they were doing it. 

It seems to me this is the human condition. Despite our propensity for laziness, deep down, we want to do heroic things with our life. We want to conquer challenges. Our Catholic schools should call kids to do the same. 

Have you been paying attention to our military recruiting videos? They tap into this desire in young people to live nobly. My favorite video is the Navy's "Call to Serve" (see above). The appeal is powerful: Come be part of the unique group of men and women who are willing to live meaningful, important lives serving others. “The U.S. Navy—a Global Force for Good!”

Or how about the Peace Corps? “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” Or the Army? “Be all that you can be!” Become part of the “few, the proud (Marine Corps). 

Our last three popes understood this instinct in youth and spoke brilliantly to them: 

John Paul II: “(Young people) It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity… (World Youth Day, Rome, 2000

Pope Benedict: “The world promises you comfort. But you were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness!” (Source unknown)

Pope Francis: Jesus gives us the courage to swim against the tide.  Pay attention, my young friends: to go against the current; With him we can do great things… Commit yourselves to great ideals… Stake your lives on noble ideals.”    (Homily, Sacrament of Confirmation, 2013).

Or how about Jesus himself? “Whoever wants to be my disciple must take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

What do the recruiting videos, the popes and Jesus understand about the human condition that we often forget? That we all have a deep desire to do noble things—hard things, even. Let’s not water down the gospel challenge by pandering! Let our school issue the gospel’s clarion call for our students to do great things with their lives! 

4) Our language should be welcoming of families from other faiths without watering down our own. When I was a young principal, because 35% of our students were not Catholic, I often tied myself up in knots when I tried to talk about our common mission, using clunky phrases such as “Catholic and Christian” in an attempt to be ecumenically sensitive (as if being Catholic were not Christian?). But this is entirely unnecessary. When our non-Catholic families enroll their children in “Pope John Paul II Catholic High School” or "St. Mary Immaculate" they know what they’re signing up for! And what I believe they want, in addition to a strong academic program, is a school that immerses their child in a lively, authentic community of faith. 

We shouldn’t water things down. It’s often the quirky, even “weird” stuff that makes our faith so attractive. If we strip it down to a”lowest common denominator,” our faith becomes much less interesting, much less compelling to our students. I grew up in Mobile, AL, the birthplace of Mardi Gras (sorry New Orleans!). In my first year as head of JPII in Nashville, Mardi Gras came and went without notice or fanfare. Unacceptable! So the next year, I went to Walmart and bought almost all the candy in the store, filled five pillow sacks, gave one to each member of our administrative team, and we went to every classroom at 2 p.m., showering students with candy and shouting “Happy Mardi Gras!” The students, of course, loved it. The teachers were a little less enthusiastic at first, but they were good sports and came around! 

I believe we should embrace the full tradition of our faith, from Marian devotion, Eucharistic adoration and celebration of the saints, all the way to our progressive social justice teachings, and invite our non-Catholic students to join in! 

Here’s how I phrase all this today: 

“We welcome the participation of students and families of all Christian faiths, united in service to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

(Part III to follow)