Something New?

“SEE, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the wilderness I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers. “  (Isaiah 43: 19)

At the time of his writing, Isaiah was speaking to a Hebrew people that had been utterly destroyed by the Babylonian empire. Their families were split apart, exiled to foreign lands. Jerusalem, their holy city, decimated. Their Temple, reduced to rubble. Yahweh, the “warrior” who had once “triumphed gloriously,”  who had “cast a horse and chariot into the sea” (Exodus 15), thoroughly defeated.  And yet remarkably, Isaiah challenges them to see that God is doing something new through all of this, and encourages them to see in their suffering, a chance for their purification and redemption, promising not just a king who shall rise against Babylon (Cyrus, king of Persia), but also a servant, who shall, one day, “justify many,” and by “whose stripes (they) will be healed” (Isaiah 53). 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the impact of Covid-19 on our Catholic schools. Many of our more vulnerable schools could end up closing, the virus in effect “fast forwarding” their eventual demise. What does this mean for us? How might this impact the future of our Church? What might we consider doing differently? 

It is difficult to be in the middle of a crisis, crushed by the emergencies of the moment, and step back enough to discern, perhaps, good that may come from it. But as people of hope and faith, who believe in the mercy and providence of God, I think that’s what we are being called to do. In times of prosperity, we often slip into patterns that cramp us, locking us into practices that may have once been effective, but now no longer help us flourish. A crisis forces us to rethink everything. How can we, as one pundit phrased it, “not waste a good crisis” to do what needs doing?   

I have a few tentative thoughts, both at the school level and more broadly. 

One of the more detrimental trends over the last 25 years  is decreasing parental involvement in our schools.  If we host a PTO meeting, we’ll have very few parents attend. If we invite an expert to talk to our parents about health and wellness of teenagers so as to help those struggling with their teens, typically the most committed parents—the ones who are good at it!—are the only ones to show up. I’ve caught myself moaning about this, decrying the insane “busy-ness” of our parents, who at the end of a work day are stressed and exhausted, unwilling to leave their house once home. 

But if truth be told, despite raising four kids and understanding this parental exhaustion first hand, as principal, I’ve never really done anything differently to help accommodate our parents at night.   In early May, however, having read articles on the importance of “connection” during the shut-down,  I decided to host five “zoom” sessions with parents, beginning with senior parents, then junior parents, sophomores, freshmen. and finally, incoming families. I scheduled them for one hour, at 7 p.m., on successive nights. Turnout was huge—close to 70%. No doubt some of the interest was fueled by anxiety over the virus. But I think part of it, too, was how much more convenient it was for them. They didn’t have to arrange child care, spend time getting dressed up, or waste time getting back and forth. Might we be able to do more of this post-vaccine? Could we not schedule parent-teacher conferences this way? Have “coffee with the principal” via zoom to talk about issues of mutual concern? Host virtual “open houses?” Could coaches host meetings with team parents from time to time? 

We were forced to learn how to use “Facebook live,” so as to broadcast our  press conference announcing Philip Rivers as our future football coach, and later, to present our end of year Awards assembly. While broadcasting live video, Facebook simultaneously records the event, allowing people who missed it to review the video.  This provides excellent, meaningful content to our social media pages, which can then be shared by viewers to other social media, expanding our reach. Could we do more of this, for music concerts, ball games, other school events, or even a “state of the school address” by the principal and advisory council chair?

In the past, teachers who are sick or out for professional development have been asked to create “assignments” for substitutes to give to our students—kids are inclined to view this as “busy work” (and they’re often right).  But with a full 8 weeks of synchronous and a-synchronous learning under our belt, might we be able to create more meaningful class work and videos for our students, perhaps even “zooming” in live? Could we host summer “faculty meetings” if something arises, which we need to discuss as a school?  These are possibilities we’ve never really considered. 

And what about the diocesan level? 

Though huge western dioceses have been doing so this for years, why not conduct more diocesan principal meetings virtually? The cumulative time lost for everyone getting to a physical site and back could be saved, even while allowing principals to maintain a physical presence in their schools. Perhaps virtual meetings could be shorter, but more frequent, improving their effectiveness.  

And could not dioceses arrange “cohorts” of principals, some with more experience, to virtually mentor younger principals? Assistant principals? Or advancement folks? Could not superintendents check-in more frequently with school leaders, if through video-conference?  Could not new diocesan policies, or changes to employee benefits, be promulgated via zoom, with a chance for Q/A at the end? 

And as schools close, making our “system” of schools ever smaller, is it time to rethink the very idea of a “system” of schools? One of the inevitable results of a thinking of ourselves as a “system” is template thinking: each school is governed by a set of diocesan policies, each follows the same calendar with an 8-3 school day (or thereabouts), each implements the diocesan curriculum, using diocesan-approved textbooks, and taught by teachers who meet the same certification requirements. Even tuitions are similar.  Being part of that system may seem like a great benefit to our smaller, more vulnerable schools, but I believe the lack of differentiation actually hurts them, because it makes them less competitive vs. Catholic schools with more resources and better economies of scale. If a smaller school tries to run the same program as a larger, wealthier school with newer buildings, better manicured lawns, better paid teachers, and with more bells and whistles, why would parents send their children there? Why wouldn’t parents drive an extra ten minutes or so to put their kids in the “better” school?

What if, by contrast, we had a Montessori option within a diocese? A dual-language school? A “classical school” option? Perhaps a “year-round” school? In light of the school closings that Covid19 is causing, I believe we’re going to need to provide parents with real options that may cause them to reconsider us anew. Otherwise, we may face an accelerated “Darwinian evolution,” whereby only the strongest, wealthiest schools survive. I write more about this idea here. 

And if we moved in that direction—less a “system” of similar schools and more of a “consortium” of a wider variety of distinctive schools—might we need to rethink the role of the superintendent’s office? One of our current problems is that canon law is very clear that pastors of parishes have authority over their schools, but too often, they abdicate their authority—or more charitably, delegate their authority—to the superintendent, which has the unfortunate effect of undercutting local initiative and entrepreneurialism. If a local school is looking upward and not inward for its “renaissance,” it need not expect to escape the “dark ages” very soon. 

Pastors and principals should be the two lungs that help parishes breathe, solving problems and planning together, but the average principal spends much more time with central office personnel, at meetings, responding to diocesan directives and emails, following diocesan protocols. In fact, it’s relatively rare that principals and pastors even have a set weekly meeting time together. Our relationships are upside down!

What, then, of the central school office? Could the central office become less regulatory in nature, and more of a catalyst for innovation and experimentation? What if, for example, it hosted a zoom conference with a principal of a well regarded Montessori school from some other diocese, together with 2-3 diocesan principals as a possibility for their consideration?  Or the same idea, but with a dual language school, or a classical Christian school principal? Could the diocese survey families about their interest in a year round school option? Might there be interest in a kind of “hybrid” school that made a special appeal to home-schooling families, allowing parents to teach the humanities one part of the day, but providing them the option of taking math and science classes at a particular school, or being part of its athletic program? 

Could one school pool the best teachers in the diocese for a truly excellent summer learning experience? Could the diocese host monthly sessions (via zoom), whereby it invited principals who were particularly good at some area of administration (finances, hiring practices, discipline, curriculum, etc. ) to lead discussions with the other principals on that topic? Could diocesan high schools share their best teachers in hard to hire positions by “live streaming” to the other high schools? Could we invite interested teachers to attend principal training seminars once or twice a month via zoom, preparing them, but also getting to know them well enough to discern talent, and giving the diocese a “bench” for the future? 

I believe Covid19 puts all of this on the table for serious discussion and consideration. May God give us the wisdom, courage and grace to embrace new ideas and new forms, so that He may create a “way through the wilderness,”  and “rivers,  from wastelands.”

Catholic Schools of the Future

Note: I gave this talk to Catholic businessmen and women of Nashville at their monthly breakfast on the occasion of Catholic Schools week in 2011.

Thank you for inviting me to speak with you this morning.

Last week, we celebrated national Catholic Schools Week, and so I’d like to stay on theme this morning by talking about Catholic Schools of the Future. To do that, however, allow me to talk briefly about Catholic Schools of the Past.

Imagine the following:

You’re a business analyst, hired by a national company to address these alarming trends :

• 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: The company now has 8600 franchises and only 2.6 million customers.

• By 2010, it lost another 1600 franchises and an additional 20% of its customer base.

As best you can tell, there are three issues driving these numbers:

• In 1960, this company was one of the few privately held companies in its field. Over the last decades, a plethora of new privately supported ventures and new public initiatives have made the competition much tougher.

• 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 to attain the same skill set as the previous base.

• Each franchise must invest heavily in buildings and infrastructure to deliver its product. Unfortunately, many are now surrounded by customers unable to pay retail price because of changing demographics. The businesses are now too far away from the customers.

“What has the company done to address its precipitously dropping market share?” you ask the CEO of the company.

“We’ve counseled our franchises to look for ways to raise capital to improve their buildings and hire better employees” says the current CEO, fidgeting. “We’ve also suggested to keep their prices low and give discount pricing to those who might need it so as to keep brand loyalty.”

“That doesn’t sound like a winning formula”, you remark. “How can you reasonably expect these franchises to raise revenue for capital improvements when they can’t collect full freight for goods and services? "Let me ask it differently” you say. “What has the company done to help the franchises? ” “Well”, the C.E.O. says hesitatingly, we’ve created a national association of these franchises, and we have an annual convention to swap good ideas and conduct research that measures how we’re doing.

“It looks like your research says it's been a bad fifty years” you say. " Do you have a new business model? Have we tried to re-organize the way we do things? Or are you still pretty much delivering it the way you did fifty years ago?

“Uh… We've added some technology, but the business model is the same”.

It is impossible to imagine a company in the Fortune 500 operating this way. Their boards would have fired many CEO’s over those fifty years. The company is crumbling and yet they have no business plan, no plan for his franchises to re-structure, re-locate or try something new.

But this is exactly the state of Catholic K-12 education in this country. From our peak enrollments in the early 1960’s, we’ve lost more than 60% of our student population and closed 6,000 of our schools. In the last ten years alone, we’ve lost 1600 of those schools and 20% of our student population. (NCEA, Annual Statistical Report on Schools, 2009). Just last month the Archdiocese of New York announced it is closing another 27 schools next year—26 elementary schools and one high school.

It’s an absolute crisis. Our Church and our schools are making heroic efforts to stem the tide, but we’re tackling this crisis as if we just need to work harder and keep doing what we’re doing better.

Catholic Schools of the Future will need to consider new paradigms.

I have five thoughts about this.

My first thought: Catholic Schools of the Future are going to have to be more willing to experiment with hybrid parish-regional models of Catholic schooling. Exclusively parochial schools—schools tied to a parishes—worked very well for the first hundred years of Catholic schools, but I don’t think it’s going to work for the next 100. City demographics have changed and will continue to do so, leaving once well-positioned schools in neighborhoods that can no longer support them. And so, a kind of Darwinian evolution takes place—the strongest schools, surrounded by the most affluent neighborhoods, thrive, while the weaker schools die a slow, painful death. I think we’re going to have to look at models—not in every parish or every school, but where this makes sense—where schools need to be linked to several parishes. It’s not a coincidence that of all the schools which have closed in the last 50 years, relatively few are diocesan high schools—precisely because they are not tied to single parishes, but pull from a broad geography. Regional schools are also more able to create robust financial aid programs that help subsidize families who need it, making Catholic education more accessible.

Second thought on Catholic Schools of the Future: I think we’re going to need to experiment with our traditional K-8, 9-12 model and look at different age groupings for our schools where that makes sense. When the K-8 model formed in the late 1800’s, there was virtually no competition other than public schools and elite, very expensive private schools. Now, it’s an extremely competitive market, with all levels of private schools and magnet schools. Statistics show that our schools become vulnerable when students move into 5th, 6th and 7th grade, because at that age, our schools compete against K-12 or 5-12 or 7-12 private schools that leverage their high school facilities—libraries, science labs, athletic fields, athletic programs, down to their younger kids. I think it's unrealistic to expect that stand-alone K-8 schools can duplicate those offerings. Remember too that although we talk about K-8’s, the reality is that many of our kids are not beginning in K anymore—they're beginning in 4 year old programs or even 3 year old programs, meaning by the time the child gets to 6th grade, he or she has been at that school as long as a the 8th grader has in a traditional K-8. So I predict that nationally, we’re going to need to look at other more competitive models—perhaps, for example, distinct middle schools, perhaps locating those middle schools on the campus or in the vicinity of the high schools, tied to some sort of regional paradigm. Or perhaps we need to think about K-12 schools like our private school counterparts.

Third thought: I think we'll need to look at new partnerships between high schools and existing elementary schools, where administration teams merge to run both schools. For example, in the president-principal model typical of diocesan high schools, the president may be able to help the elementary school by using his or her development office to help market that school and professionalize that school's external image. Or more radically, in Montgomery, AL we took two existing parish elementary schools, merged them with the diocesan high school to become a "K-12 school with three campuses", renamed the school "Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School," and made the president responsible for running a single business office and development office that served all the campuses together. Each campus, however, retained its own principal, who retained the day to day administrative responsibilities (for more on this, go here). This was a more realistic use of resources than expecting each elementary school to hire its own president, run its own business office and hire its own development director. It also allowed us to do things that our parents appreciated, like giving cross-campus discounts to families with kids at both the high school and elementary campus.

Fourth thought: To attract and retain the kind of teachers we want and to offer competitive programs with our private school counterparts, we are going to have to adopt more of a college tuition model for our schools. By this I mean we’re going to have to ask parents to pay for the true cost of educating a child, raising tuitions to get to that point, while at the same time, increase our financial aid substantially. We can no longer be the cheapest game in town—the sisters are no longer with us. Yet the most highly educated, highly credentialed teachers in Catholic schools across the nation with 20+ years of experience rarely make more than 50,000/year. Most diocesan principals make less than 70,000/year. Think about trying to support families on those numbers after being in the same career for 15-20 years. Though passing on the faith remains our most central mission, middle class Catholics expect us to also offer first tier, competitive academic and athletic programs. We cannot do so if we’re priced at ½, or ¼ as much as our competitors. Being the cheapest will no longer sustain us. So I think we’re going to have to raise rates aggressively, but while we do so, offer robust financial aid and remove whatever stigma exists about applying for it. After all, almost 80% of full time college students in this country receive some sort of financial aid.

Fifth thought Regarding these paradigm changes, let us admit that our church is not very good at changing paradigms. We’re better at preserving and caretaking than innovating. In contrast, businessmen and women such as yourself are much better at strategic planning, much more adept at modifying on the fly based on what the numbers show you, quicker to change marketing strategies if necessary, more accustomed to risk-taking, more willing to innovate.

That’s why I believe Catholic schools of the future must consider models of institutional governance that give a greater role to committed Catholic laypersons such as yourself, not just within the local schools, but at a broader, diocesan level. The archdiocese of Chicago, for example, founded a Board of Education in the Spring of 2009 to help them make recommendations for the future of their schools. The Board was hand-picked by the bishop, and reads like a who’s who list of Chicago Catholics—CEO’s, university leaders, top level Catholic businessmen and women. They’re doing amazing things—I invite you to spend some time on their diocesan web site just to get a sense of things. But here’s the biggest news: for the first time in decades, Chicago Catholic schools opened with more students than the previous year. I don't presume to have all the answers, but I think if we empower people like you to dream, innovate and lead, there are new models and new ideas that you will uncover help us implement.

Concluding thoughts:

Of this I am convinced: We have a lot to work with in Nashville. We have two remarkable diocesan high schools. Most dioceses would give their right arm to have EITHER a Father Ryan or a JPII. We have many excellent, strong elementary schools. The active presence of the Dominican nuns is a tremendous blessing to Nashville, and has lessened some of the national effects I have discussed here. With a few exceptions, we are generally healthy. But that’s precisely the time to really plan for our future, to consider new paradigms and structures—from a position of strength….not from weakness or out of desperation.

I want to thank all of you who are already involved as volunteers in our schools or those of you who send your kids to our schools. If I or Pope John Paul II can serve you or your families in any way, don’t hesitate to call me.

Thank you.