Schools "R" Us!
How Local Partnerships Can Revitalize K-12 Education
| By: Mike Hoey
If, in the fall, you visit a small town on a Friday night what do you see? The lights from the high school football stadium beckon. If you go there and talk to people in the stands, many will tell you their kids are doing fine. Some are making plans for college; others are hunting up job prospects. Some of those playing on the field may have attended a Catholic elementary school, but now they are part of this school and they feel at home. They know the other kids; this is their town.
Across Missouri local schools represent the heart and soul of communities. They do more than educate children. One recent Saturday morning while visiting my daughter and her family in Palmyra, I took a walk and happened by the public high school. The parking lot was full of cars and pickups. When I got back to my daughter's house I asked her husband, who is a teacher and a coach at the high school, what was going on. He said it was the annual craft and antique show. Along with churches, the schools are where people gather.
These local schools, be they public or parochial, are the workhorses of K-12 education in what city people sometimes call "out-state Missouri." In urban areas it may be more difficult to create this kind of close-knit community, but it happens. For years Catholic parochial schools have been a stabilizing force in the urban landscape. Almost half the elementary school children who attend St. Louis Catholic Academy live within a two-mile radius of the school.
School levies for the public school and tuitions for the Catholic school may hurt the pocketbook some, but it gives people some "skin in the game," investment in how the school is doing. Couple this with school boards and parent-teacher groups and these schools draw people away from their television sets and laptops to meet face-to-face with neighbors and plan how to make their community a better place.
Schools can do a lot to involve their local communities. There are also ways public and private schools can work together to improve their community and educate children. Here are a few examples of how schools can cooperate.
Dual Enrollment: Missouri already has a dual enrollment law (Section 167.031 RSMo.), which allows a child to enroll in classes in both a public and a private/parochial school. If a private school does not offer a certain course, say, Spanish, but the public school does, the student can enroll in that Spanish class and then return to the private school for the remainder of the school day. Conversely, a public school student can enroll in a religion class at a Catholic school and then return to the public school. All this is legal; it just takes planning and cooperation among local school officials.
Virtual Schools: Public and private schools can also cooperate through cyberspace without moving any students around. Missouri law (Section 162.1250 RSMo) allows public school districts to set up their own virtual school. All resident children, including students in non-public schools, are eligible to participate. Is your local public school district offering courses through the Internet? If not, consider discussing the matter with district officials.
Professional Development for Teachers: Public and private school teachers often attend the same professional development conferences at national, state and regional gatherings. Why not encourage more interchange at the local level? Have teachers teach each other, with more conversation and sharing of ideas between public and private school teachers. Meet at the public school one month and the private or parochial school the next month.
Community Foundations: Why not set up a foundation that will raise private donations to help both the local public school and private schools? Oh, yes, public schools get tax money, but the unpopularity of tax increases is squeezing the budgets of public schools. A foundation could supplement the public monies received by public schools (perhaps financing a new computer or science lab). That same foundation could offer financial assistance to students who want to attend a private or parochial school.
Public School Levies: Finally, if the public school district is serving the community, Catholic leaders can support local school levies. This engenders good will and more cooperation. It can also give the public school the resources it needs to better serve all resident school children.
Mike Hoey is the Executive Director of the Missouri Catholic Conference.
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Rose Philippine Duchesne: Famous Missourian
| State legislators who tend to be "pro-education," may not realize it, but one of Missouri's first educators was a Catholic sister. A statute of Rose Philippine Duchesne stands in the third floor rotunda of the Missouri Capitol along with statues of other famous Missourians.
Duchesne established the first free school west of the Mississippi in 1818.
Her school was a log cabin in what is present day St. Charles. She spent 34 years of her life working to establish schools and doing other charitable work across the American Frontier with Native Americans and settlers.
Duchesne was sent in 1818 to the Louisiana territory by Bishop Louis-Guillaume-Valentin Dubourg who was looking for educators to help him evangelize the Indian and French children of his diocese.
Late in life when she was 72 years of age Duchesne realized her dream of working with the American Indians. At Sugar Creek, Kansas she worked at a school for the Potawatomi. She spent long hours in contemplation and became known by the Potawatomi as the "woman who prays always."
In 1940, Duchesne was beatified by Pope Pius XII. In 1988 Pope John Paul II cannonized her a saint.
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Joplin Provides Model of Public-Private
School Cooperation
| Catholic schools and public schools are often viewed as being in competition with each other. While this may be necessary when it comes to school sports, ensuring that children are successful requires the effort of the entire community and all the schools in that area. Joplin, Missouri, is a prime example of how public-private school cooperation benefits all students.
"We have always had a great working relationship with the public schools," notes Principal Gene Koester of McAuley Catholic High School. "For years all the schools in the commnity have cooperated well when it comes to Title I & II federal education programs." These programs help students with reading, language and other developmental problems.
"Joplin public schools made it easy for our students to get the services they were entitled to. They were also very good about taking care of the costs of our teacher development in these areas," he noted. "The Joplin public schools are always informing us of educational programs or meetings that might be of value to our students and teachers. They take a very Christian, professional attitude toward us."
One innovative program begun several years ago by Joplin Public School Superintendent C.J. Huff was Bright Futures. With a large majority of Joplin area students meeting the definition of poverty, this program was created to help meet the needs of at-risk students and to keep them from dropping out of school. By engaging churches, businesses and human services organizations, resources are provided to meet the needs of students.
Catholic school students participated in adopting schools and had food and clothing drives to assist the needy. "For example, we have clothing resources at our church," noted Fr. J. Friedel of St. Peter the Apostle parish in Joplin. "If a child comes to the public school without decent shoes, they contact us and we try to meet their needs. It is a good working relationship."
The relationship between the public and private schools became even closer after the EF5 tornado devastated the community of Joplin on May 22, 2011. With the destruction of St. Mary's Catholic Elementary School as well as several of the public schools, it was essential to work together.
"After the tornado, Catholic and public school officials would meet often by phone or in meetings to see how we could help each other," said Steve Jones principal of St. Mary's School. "We were both in need of facilities so we would keep each other updated on leads for new locations that would work for us," said Jones. Numerous items (TVs, computers, books) were donated and shared between the public and private schools."Wish-lists" for the Catholic school teachers were added to the lists of public school teachers. This mutual cooperation, plus overwhelming community, national and international support helped both the public and parochial schools to start the school year on time.
Perhaps the greatest sign of the mutual respect between the Catholic community and the public school system in Joplin came when Mercy Health System donated the former 50-acre St. John's campus in Joplin to three Joplin groups, including the public school system to build a new school. St. John's Hospital was destroyed by the May 22 tornado.
Today Joplin is a community that is looking toward the future. It is a community that values the education of all its children and is enriched by a spirit of cooperation between its public and private schools.
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Principles for Communtiy and School Development
| It is always heartening to find other education organizations that share some of the same ideas as Catholic educators. The Rural Policy Challenge Program issued an interesting booklet in 1999 entitled, "Standing Up For Community and School: Rural People Tell Their Stories."
According to author Bradwell D. Scott the Rural Challenge work is based on several fundamental ideas:
* Human beings cannot live well in isolation. We need community.
* Community can occur only in a place that people share, face to face.
* Strong community is the best habitat for excellence in education.
* Excellent schools build strong communities.
* Every person has an equal right to an education that fully develops his or her intellect, and a responsibility to exercise that right.
* Providing equal educational opportunity for every person is the responsibility of the entire community.
* Education, like people, should be well rooted in a place; and
* People educated to live well in a place will be contributing members of any community in any place they choose to inhabit.
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