Catholic schools

Five Preparation Priorities For Catholic School Leaders

August 16, 2025

As summer winds down and backpacks begin to fill with sharpened pencils and fresh folders, Catholic school leaders stand at the helm, ready to guide their communities into a new school year. Beyond lesson plans and enrollment numbers, the mission is centered on forming minds and hearts rooted in faith. A school that constantly renews its mission stays alive and relevant in both heart and purpose. The new year is more than an academic refresh, it’s a spiritual recommitment. Catholic school leaders have the chance to be shepherds, scholars, and stewards all at once. By planning intentionally and leading faithfully, they’ll not only educate minds but ignite souls.

Here are five key areas for Catholic school leaders to prioritize and set the tone for a meaningful and well-rounded school year:

1. Renewed Spiritual Leadership

Catholic schools aren’t just institutions of learning, they’re sacred spaces of formation. Reigniting the spiritual heartbeat of the school helps anchor every decision in Gospel values.

Schedule time for personal prayer and reflection.
Plan community-building faith events like faculty retreats, student-led prayer services, and liturgical celebrations.
Collaborate with parish priests or campus ministers to ensure that the school year starts with a Mass or blessing.

2. Strengthening Academic Excellence

Faith and intellect walk hand in hand. Leaders should ensure academic rigor meets high standards. Launch a professional development series that not only boosts pedagogical skills but also integrates Catholic identity into each subject.

Review curricula to align with both diocesan and state guidelines.
Support instruction that meets diverse learners’ needs.
Promote math, reading and writing literacy initiatives alongside theology.
Calendar staff/department meetings to consistently revisit the series throughout the year.
Identify measures for success that can be recognized using classroom visits.

3. Fostering Environments of Safety and Belonging

Safety is more than just about physical space, it is also about emotional and spiritual well-being. A spirit of belonging affirms the dignity of each student, reflecting Catholic values and fostering a community of respect and support.

Create proactive mental health support systems. This could be in the form of a peer mentoring program or regular wellness check-ins by counselors, teachers, and school leaders.
Ensure that policies reflect the dignity of every person, adult or child, reinforcing that all faculty, staff and students are made in the image of God.
Review emergency procedures and update safety protocols with faculty and staff and practice. Have a calendar of when drills and procedures will be practiced with students. These can often be put aside during busy times of the year.

4. Deepening Parent Partnerships

Parents are the primary educators of faith. Strengthening that partnership cultivates a richer home and school connection. A united front between school and home leads to stronger outcomes and deeper formation.

Host a faith-centered back-to-school night or welcome breakfast.
Tailor monthly newsletters to intentionally highlight spiritual themes, classroom happenings, and family resources.
Invite parents to volunteer for service projects and classroom activities that reinforce Catholic Social Teachings and academic support practices.

5. Evaluating Long-Term Mission Goals

While daily operations can be demanding, it is important for leaders to carve out time for visionary thinking.

Revisit the school’s mission statement and consider whether it reflects the community’s current needs and aspirations.
Set 3 to 5 year goals for enrollment, fundraising, spiritual engagement, and alumni relations.
Form an ongoing strategic planning committee to maintain long term visioning for the school.

-Dan Heding

Reflecting on Grad at Grad Statements on the Feast of St. Clare

August 11, 2025

“We become what we love, and who we love shapes who we become.” – St. Clare of Assisi

I remember one August (many years ago) when I spent several days preparing my classroom for the start of school. I had just been hired for my first teaching job, teaching middle school students in a Catholic parish school in a suburb of Milwaukee, WI. I was hanging up some motivational posters in the classroom (probably purchased through a catalog I found in the teacher’s lounge of the school where I did my student teaching). One poster said, “Who you are becoming is more important than what you are achieving.” I chose to put it at the front of the classroom. I certainly wanted my students to work hard, to get good grades, and to achieve a lot, but even at the beginning of my teaching career I had a sense that there was truth to that poster.

A number of years later I started working at a university sponsored by Franciscan sisters, in a lay ministry formation center called the Saint Clare Center. As I began to learn more about St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi, I realized that they would have agreed with the poster at the front of my first classroom. Rather than seeking upward mobility, they chose a life of downward mobility, embracing poverty and service because they wanted to become more like Jesus. For Clare, a key to becoming more like Jesus was prayer. In one of her letters, she encouraged the reader to “Gaze upon Christ, consider Christ, contemplate Christ, so as to imitate Christ.” Clare sought to become a vessel of God’s compassionate love for others, and prayer was part of her method to promote that transformation – as was her practice of washing the feet of the other sisters in the convent, or her habit of walking through the dormitory at night to make sure each sister was well covered by a blanket.

Today is the feast of St. Clare of Assisi. If she came to a graduation ceremony at one of our Catholic schools, I think she would be uninterested in our students’ GPAs and unimpressed by the dollar amounts of the scholarships they had won. I think she would be much more interested in whether the students reflected the goals we establish when we write a Profile of a Graduate or a Grad at Grad document. In those documents, we do say that we want students who have become academically strong, who have developed into critical thinkers and lifelong learners. But we also say that we want students who have become faith-filled, generous, and compassionate. We want students who, because of their time spent in our Catholic schools, have become more fully the people God calls us to be.

This raises one question for me, on this feast day of St. Clare. Our schools are intentional and systematic about how all the parts of the school work together to produce academically strong students. Are we as intentional and systematic about how all the parts of the school work together to help students become more faith-filled, generous, and compassionate – or do we leave that task to the campus minister and the theology teacher? Is there room for us to do better at identifying methods of transformation, simple steps that everyone in the school can take to help our students (and ourselves) become more like Christ?

-Michael Taylor

Two Key Drivers of Student Retention

January 30, 2025

This week is Catholic Schools Week, and the communities of over 5,000 Catholic schools across the country are celebrating what makes Catholic schools outstanding. Most Catholic schools are also in the middle of re-enrolling their current students and recruiting new students for next year. On a practical level, enrollment is the lifeblood of a Catholic school, so it makes sense that schools put a lot of effort into marketing and messaging, into the recruitment and registration of new students. Some of those same Catholic schools, however, do not put as much passion into the retention of their existing students. Their retention efforts do not extend much beyond their re-enrollment systems, and even those can sometimes be on auto-pilot. If a school is going to have a truly healthy enrollment, retention needs to be about more than just processes. A school’s retention efforts need to be driven by commitment and connection.

Commitment

In our experience, Catholic schools do best if they give a level of time, attention, energy, and creativity to retention efforts as they do to recruiting new students. That means retention is a year-round activity that is collaborative and multi-faceted. We recommend establishing a formal retention committee or task force. This is a group of faculty, staff, and administrators that is responsible for attending to retention throughout the year. They should identify the causes of any enrollment issues, and faculty and staff throughout the school should know that this is the group to be informed if any students or families are dissatisfied. A group like this can bring diverse perspectives to retention, and can also help nurture a culture of retention in their various departments.

In the midst of all the responsibiities and time constraints that come with working in a Catholic school, commitment means that the retention committee chooses to invest time in this important work. The committee members should gather and analyze data (are there particular grade transitions where the retention rate is low?). They should conduct regular satisfaction surveys asking parents in what ways their children are doing well and in what areas they might be having a harder time. And they should conduct exit interviews with families that choose to leave the school.

Connection

Most important, all faculty and staff need to invest time in strengthening connections with students and families. Relationships are at the heart of retention. Students want to be where they feel safe, valued, cared for, and supported. Parents want their kids to feel that way as well. Catholic schools need to be intentional about building connection in every classroom with every student. In addition, because parents are in those classrooms to experience those same connections, schools should be intentional about reaching out to parents as well.

Parents love personal outreach from faculty and administrators. When a teacher, assistant principal, or principal picks up the phone or sends an email telling a parent something good about their child, the parent feels the school sees their child, cares for their child, and has a personal connection. Some schools have had success with sending a written thank-you note to families when they re-enroll, thanking the parents for trusting the school with their child. This can be a sign to parents the school treats its students with joy and gratitude, not taking their enrollment for granted.

Another option is to reach out to a parent to ask them how the year is going for their child and for them. You get lots of great feedback and parents feel that their opinion matters. When a school has a culture of responsiveness and parents feel like partners, they are more likely to be willing to work through concerns or find a way to make things work financially.

Commitment and connection are already at the heart of a Catholic school’s mission and identity and its educational program. Recognizing them as drivers of retention as well can strengthen a school’s enrollment and therefore its overall vitality.

The “What” of Professional Learning

September 26, 2024

(Part two of a two-part series)

The previous blog focused on the “how” of professional learning (PL) as researched and proposed by Heather Hill and John Papay in Building a Better PL: How to strengthen Teacher Learning, with a primary focus on well-structured collaboration, good coaching, and timely follow up meetings as the key components to good PL. But as we know, the “how” without the “what” leaves us filling space with content that is irrelevant to the work, which educators then often view as a time waster. Hill and Papay go on to explain elements to include in building a better PL environment and the evidence to support their suggestions.

Connected to the “how’ of encouraging peer collaboration for improvement is the “what” of focusing more on subject-specific instructional practices, rather than PL that emphasizes content knowledge. When teachers are taught to collaborate on their day-to-day teaching practices with a safe non-evaluative accountability built into the model, teachers tend to be more willing to try one of these new practices in their own classrooms and return to the group/PLC for feedback. It is important to note that this type of peer-to-peer collaboration has the biggest impact when it centers on shared goals meant to improve teacher practice which collectively then meets the needs of the students served. This is known as collaboration for improvement and not simply collaboration as a structural reform.

Connected to the “how” of relying on coaching to get the work done is the “what” of prioritizing practice-supportive materials over principles and precepts. Hill and Papay suggest the best coaching is personalized to the teacher’s needs, starting with existing practices and working toward integrating new instructional practices that will lead not only to personal growth but also to student growth.

Lastly, connected to the “how” of timelier follow up meetings to address teacher concerns is the “what” of teacher driven follow up sessions. In those sessions, the teacher is provided the opportunity to discuss the new strategies and design principles as each was applied in his/her classroom, which opens up the door to tweak the delivery to match the needs of the current students in the classroom. This, coupled with PL that focuses on building relationships with the students to ensure instruction is meeting their learning needs, will result in enhanced student outcomes.

While there is no one size fits all professional learning model that exists today, what is laid out here are some best practices that have been shown to be effective in STEM fields and ELA. We would love to learn from you. What is working in your school? What type of professional learning opportunities have you found to be successful in improving teacher practice and student outcomes?

Dr. Jackie Lichter

Three Synodal Priorities for Catholic School Boards

August 29, 2024

In Meitler’s work across the country, we find some unique elements in each of the schools, parishes, or dioceses we partner with, but we also see many commonalities or trends. One trend we encounter in multiple locations around the country is a desire to explore different governance models for Catholic schools. The traditional parochial school governance model works well in some places but not all. Some pastors have little knowledge about education, and their strengths are more spiritual than administrative. In addition, pastors usually have many responsibilities and demands on their time, and it can be hard for them to prioritize school governance. In those situations, the traditional parochial school governance model does not serve either the school or the pastor well.

One way to shift the burden off the pastor and strengthen the school’s ability to carry out its mission is to create a strong and effective board for the school. Most Catholic schools have a board of some type (79.5%, according to the most recent data from the National Catholic Education Association). Not all of them, though, are strong and effective. They may not have received much training on best practices. They may approach their work as if “advisory” means “passive,” – or they may take the opposite approach and try to claim more authority than they actually have. They may not have conducted strategic recruiting to ensure that board members have relevant skills and experiences. When a board is strong and effective, however, it can significantly impact the school’s success.

There exists a profound connection between the work of Catholic school boards and the processes of consultation and discernment associated with the Vatican’s Synod on Synodality. This connection is not just a theoretical one, but it can directly influence the priorities of Catholic school boards. The insights that emerge from the Synod on Synodality, with its theme of “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission,” provide a deeper understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the board members.

Mission: The “journeying together” that synodality calls us to is not a self-focused journey but a journey toward mission. The point of establishing a board is to strengthen a school’s ability to carry out its mission, and each conversation that a board has needs to stay focused on its mission. Sometimes, board members need to grow in their commitment to that mission. As a school principal, I remember that some parents would join the board to strengthen the school for their children. Over time, they would begin to care not just about their 4^th grader but the entire 4^th grade, and then gradually for the entire school. Some of them also needed to grow in appreciating not just the mission of the school but also the mission of the whole parish and even the broader church. Board orientations should make clear to new members that they are called to have that expanded vision. Each board member is a valuable part of the school's mission, and their contributions are integral to the school's success.
Communion: In its very nature, our church is a communion – a community of people in communion with one another and in communion with God. Boards should strive to reflect that communion and include diverse members. While engaging all the people of God, synodality is not grounded in the model of politics but instead the model of communion. Politics often sinks into conflict and competition as people seek their interests. On the other hand, Communion calls us to set aside our own interests as we care for one another and listen together for the will of the Holy Spirit. The prayer that opens each board meeting can remind us of that communion and prepare us for that shared listening.
Participation: Synodality reminds us that all of the faithful share in the mission of the church and that the Holy Spirit has given all of the faithful spiritual gifts in baptism – gifts that they are called to share for the good of the Church and the world, and that the church is called to recognize and promote. Councils allow schools to tap into an expanded pool of people’s gifts to support the school’s mission, and they should be attentive to people’s gifts when they seek members. The expectation at each board meeting should be the board members' full participation. I have told board members in the past that they should assess their participation after each meeting. Did they provide some information? Did they share a perspective? Did they ask a question? Did they leave with a task to accomplish? A board that functions in a way that facilitates that kind of participation is a board that honors the presence of the Holy Spirit in all of its members, guiding and inspiring their work.

We are all learning how to better “journey together” in a synodal way as a Church. A school board that prioritizes communion, participation, and mission will make real progress toward being faithful and effective. This journey is not without its challenges, but it is in overcoming these challenges that we grow and learn, becoming more effective in our roles.

Michael Taylor

Catholic schools

Commitment

Connection

meitler