Working together with new mission advancement initiative, our Catholic schools will be Alive in Christ!
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Working together with new mission advancement initiative, our Catholic schools will be Alive in Christ!
The time for discussion is over, and the time for action has begun.
On Feb. 2, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson presented at John F. Kennedy Catholic High School in Manchester his priorities for Catholic education in the Archdiocese of St. Louis and the steps to be taken to achieve them.
Since his arrival in St. Louis, the archbishop has stressed that Catholic education is his first priority. Alive in Christ, his mission advancement initiative, was begun almost two years ago to strengthen and grow Catholic education in the Archdiocese of St. Louis and grow Catholic schools here to be Alive in Christ.
From the beginning, Archbishop Carlson insisted that Catholic schools must be vibrant and growing, in their Catholic identity, their enrollment and their financial viability, while being strong instruments of evangelization, catechesis and social justice.
Now, with input from more than 3,000 people across the 11-county archdiocese and concentrated effort from members of the four mission advancement planning teams, the archbishop has made his decision on the steps to take to achieve his goals by 2018, the 200th anniversary of Catholic education in the St. Louis Archdiocese. Alive in Christ involves all schools. Although the parish assessment only includes elementary schools, a capital campaign and new archdiocesan foundation will seek additional funding for tuition assistance for high school students.
As the archbishop explained, "Alive In Christ was designed to help each parish and school build its capacity for advancing the Church's mission. This is important to every Catholic in the archdiocese because in part, we've come to think of Catholic schools in terms of dollars and cents. The truth is that Catholic schools today are the best tool of evangelization we have. And it is the responsibility of every baptized Catholic to carry out the mission of evangelization."
The following information is a summation of the archbishop's priorities of Alive in Christ, promulgated Feb. 2.
Q. How does strengthening the schools help the mission of evangelization?
All Catholic schools must strengthen their Catholic identity in a variety of ways, including regularly scheduled prayer and Mass, apologetics classes for eighth-graders and requiring that every teacher read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. New opportunities will be provided for adult faith formation, including classes on the sacraments for parents of students in Catholic schools. Outreach programs will be created for parents after their child is baptized, to welcome and connect them to the parish community, with resources for education and faith formation of preschool children, and opportunity to reserve space for them in the parish school. Parishes, schools and agencies will continue outreach efforts to inactive Catholics, including parents of students in Catholic schools, to help them return home to the Church.
Catholic schools will be authentically Catholic, providing children and their families with a sound faith foundation and knowledge of Catholic beliefs.
Q. What about academics?
All schools must develop and establish benchmarks and standards of excellence for academics, as well as faith formation. Academics have been and will continue to be a great strength of the Catholic school system in our archdiocese. Our students score more than 20 percentile points above the national average on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Our Catholic high schools have a 99-plus percent graduation rate and 98 percent of those graduates attend college.
Q. What about students with special needs?
Developing standards of excellence for academics and faith formation will certainly include our students with disabilities and special needs. We will support and expand all efforts to meet the special education and faith formation needs of our children with special needs.
Q. What about social justice and helping poor students, many of whom are not Catholic? We want to help poor children, but will it be at the expense of our Catholic children whose families aren't poor but are not in a position to pay for Catholic school tuition for their children?
It is not a question of either-or. We are committed to helping the poor and marginalized reach their full potential through education. This includes children who are not Catholic. We are also committed to providing a place in our Catholic schools for every child whose parents want that child to receive a Catholic education in every one of the 11 counties of our archdiocese, in urban, suburban and rural parishes. As Archbishop Carlson has said, there should be no empty seats in our Catholic schools.
Q. How? Catholic education is expensive. People can't afford it, even though they want it for their children. How is this initiative going to change that?
The mission advancement initiative is addressing the financial aspect of Catholic education — which is really an issue of stewardship — in several ways. First, every elementary school must create a marketing and enrollment plan to manage and increase their enrollment numbers. Full enrollment helps keep tuition affordable.
Second, there will be proactive, deanery-based planning to encourage collaborative strategy and development among parishes and schools. One example of such effort is the creation of Holy Cross Academy, the new elementary school system created from three neighboring schools — Annunciation in Webster Groves, St. Michael the Archangel in Shrewsbury and Our Lady of Providence in Crestwood. The three schools are forming into one school on three campuses to strengthen Catholic education for area families without duplication of efforts. This type of collaborative and innovative thinking can help continue Catholic education, especially in areas of changing demographics.
Third, the archdiocese will be working closely with the Missouri Catholic Conference to seek government assistance where appropriate and achievable. Currently there are two bills in the Missouri General Assembly, SJR 47 and HJR 70, seeking to amend the Missouri Constitution to remove anti-Catholic provisions that prohibit assistance common in many other states.
Fourth, the Archdiocese of St. Louis will create new funding mechanisms to help make Catholic schools financially sound and affordable.
Q. What new funding mechanisms?
1 — A parish assessment of 2 percent of all parish external revenue (excluding endowment contributions). This will begin with a 1 percent assessment on July 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, and go to the full 2 percent on July 1, 2013. This will remain a permanent annual contribution for each parish. This money will be used to assist families to provide Catholic education for their children. Some 80 percent of the funds will provide tuition assistance to eligible families in parish-based elementary schools.Funds will be awarded based on the needs of the families involved, not the needs of the parishes to which they belong. The remaining 20 percent of these funds will assist families in identified mission schools, with fewer resources and more needs, to help at-risk students. All mission school families are expected to pay a portion of the tuition to be eligible for this funding.
2 — An archdiocesan-wide capital campaign is being developed, expected to begin in 2014, to generate an additional $5 million in endowment revenue, to assist families with elementary school age children. This is in addition to already existing endowment funds in the archdiocese.
3 — An archdiocesan Catholic foundation will be established to develop and manage endowment funds for all archdiocesan ministries, with special emphasis on tuition assistance needs for Catholic families. This foundation will concentrate on raising funds through major and planned gifts.
Archbishop Carlson said, "This is not something that can be accomplished by one person, one school or one parish. It can only be accomplished by our entire archdiocese, fully unified and Alive in Christ!"
OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOLS BY THE NUMBERS
119 Elementary schools serving more than 30,000-plus students
- 90 Single Parish Schools
- 17 Inter-Parish Schools
- 4 Diocesan (Special Education)
- 8 Private
Elementary School Locations
- 22 Urban
- 55 Suburban
- 42 Outside St. Louis City and County
28 Secondary Schools serving almost 13,000 students
- 2 Single Parish
- 10 Diocesan
- 16 Private
Secondary School Locations
- 6 Urban
- 16 Suburban
- 6 Outside St. Louis City and County
Stay informed
For more information on the mission advancement initiative, contact George Henry, archdiocesan superintendent of Catholic education, or a member of the Catholic Education Center staff at (314) 792-7300 or see archstl.org/education.
