Up Front and Personal

Catholic Schools Must Stay True to Foundations

by Rita Piro

This year’s Catholic Schools Week will be my last. After 36 years as a teacher, chairperson, and admissions director at a Catholic high school in the Diocese of Brooklyn, I will soon finalize the paperwork for my pension and hand in my school keys, thus ending my full-time career as an educator. My years as an educator in our Catholic schools have brought many blessings, not the least of which has been working with incredible people in the elementary and secondary schools, the Department of Education, and various diocesan offices.

Catholic education has substantially changed over the years, both in our diocese and throughout the country. For decades, the children of Western European immigrants packed Catholic school classrooms across the United States. The 1965 peak enrollment of seven million students in Catholic schools nationwide has steadily decreased to the current PK-12 enrollment of 1,693,327. The Northeast has experienced the largest decrease in enrollment, while the Southeast, the Great Lakes, West, and Far West regions now account for almost half of the Catholic school population.

While many say that to survive, Catholic schools need to loosen their foundation in the faith and integrate a more secularized experience, my years in Catholic education have repeatedly proved that the exact opposite is what’s necessary. Three basic components of Catholic schools must exist if we are to continue our mission successfully:

1. Select principals, presidents, board members, trustees, and other leaders who are not only practicing Catholics but who embrace every aspect of the mission of Jesus Christ and who seek out and create opportunities to be a true witness to the faith for children, faculty, parents and community members. They must not be content to leave their Catholic faith in a drawer or
closet to be brought out or put on only when necessary or, worse, convenient.

2. Religious Studies must not be treated as an incidental class or filler course. Rather, it must be the central focus of the
entire school curriculum and activities calendar. As a teacher of both religious studies and another New York State-required subject, I approached every class with various methodologies, always including a strategy for how to work the mission into every unit. Overt or subtle, the mission was always the prime objective. Formed by the Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood Education Ministry, I remained grounded in the shibboleth: the mission is what we teach, the subject is the tool we use.

3. Demand that faculty and parents know and understand the Catholic school mission and their role in it. Many parents
choose Catholic schools because they want strong academics, small class sizes, structure and boundaries, and a safe environment. Faculty often use Catholic schools as a stepping stone or waiting room before landing a more lucrative position in or out of education. Neither of these stances is acceptable. Everyone connected to a Catholic school must be connected to its mission, whether teaching, running an extracurricular program, or volunteering for an event.

More than ever, Catholic schools need to be Catholic. We are not public schools, we are not charter schools, we are not even private schools. We are Catholic schools, and it is that distinction that not only allows but obligates us to continue to provide for the formation of our future Catholic leaders and members.


Rita E. Piro has been a teacher, chairperson, and admissions director at The Mary Louis Academy in Jamaica Estates for 36 years and is an award-winning member of the Catholic Media Association.