June 6, 2009
Holy Family School in Citrus Heights adopts new model of governance
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Charles Suarez, right, who will become principal of Holy Family School in Citrus Heights in the fall, talks with current principal, Loretto Sister Arlene Connelly. Sister Connelly will become the school’s president. Holy Family School is the first elementary school in the diocese to institute shared governance by a president and a principal. Cathy Joyce/Herald photo
A staple act on the old Ed Sullivan Show was the plate spinner. He set up
a dozen wooden poles and balanced a china dinner plate on each one by twirling
it so that it spun on its axis on the pole’s tip.
The audience watched with held breath as the plate spinner dodged among the poles, refreshing the speed on the wobbling plates as they slowed, keeping the plates spinning.
That’s what being an elementary school principal is like, says Charles Suarez, principal of Presentation School in Sacramento. There are so many parts of the job to be kept balanced and in motion, he said, that the principal can’t focus on one more part than another without something crashing to the floor.
Yet, Suarez loves being a school principal. He has 20 years of experience on the job in various diocesan elementary schools, and is poised to take over as principal of Holy Family School in Citrus Heights in the fall. But at Holy Family, the job will be different.
Holy Family School will be the first elementary school in the diocese to adopt the president-principal model of governance. Suarez will be the school’s principal while Loretto Sister Arlene Connelly, current principal since 1996, will become president.
In an interview with The Herald, Sister Connelly explained the thinking behind the new model.
“The principal’s job has expanded tremendously,” she said. The old job description centered on the curriculum: hire and mentor teachers, oversee classrooms, choose textbooks, develop programs for advanced students, oversee the building and grounds, and complete some administrative tasks and paperwork.
In addition, she noted, the job now also includes overseeing the technology program to provide school computers and training, and a social services program, to provide food cards and clothing for needy school families, as well as Christmas programs for the poor, including school families, and collections for the food bank, among other services.
Today, Sister Connelly points out, the principal is also the connection between the school and various government agencies: federal programs for students through the local public schools district, for reading and math help; city and county agencies governing various actions, such as putting in sewer lines and redirecting traffic; and social services agencies with concerns about children in their programs.
Then there’s the administrative paperwork, which Sister Connelly said has increased “exponentially” over the years.
“The job keeps expanding,” she said, “and most of our principals are laypeople with families of their own. It’s a lot to ask of them.”
Richard Burke, president and CEO of Catholic School Management, suggests that if anything, Sister Connelly downplays the workload of school principals.
Catholic School Management is a Connecticut-based consulting firm that helps Catholic schools across the country set up their own development programs.
Burke doesn’t know of any elementary schools trying the president-principal governance model, but in high schools, he notes, the principal is chief administrator of academics, student affairs, and the faith community, as well as supervisor of the instructional program.
The president, Burke says, is responsible for the financial well-being of the school, the overall business office management, all institutional advancement or development, relationships with the school board, the parent community, the community at large, and with government agencies, as well as with legal considerations of the school and marketing.
The president-principal governance model helps high schools to advance their development programs, bringing in sources of funding beyond the traditional sources of parents’ wallets and diocesan subsidies. The model is new to elementary schools, Burke noted, but then a dozen years ago, so were development programs.
Once found only in colleges and high schools, development programs are becoming standard departments of Catholic elementary schools across the nation as financially struggling schools seek funding sources beyond parent and parish support.
Formal development programs, Burke explained, “are about attracting human and financial resources” through strategic planning, coordinated fundraising, annual fund drives, planned giving, capital campaigns, and endowment funds.
Since 1997, when the diocese brought in Catholic School Management to help schools establish development programs, 24 of the more than 40 diocesan elementary schools have completed or are currently in the three-year development training program, according to Gail Sherman, associate superintendent for curriculum, development and programs in the Catholic Schools Department.
Of those schools with development programs, 15 have launched annual fund drives, she said, which bring in a range of $10,000 to $164,000 to the individual schools, totaling between $500,000 to $700,000 each year. The schools keep all of those funds.
Collectively, the elementary schools that have annual fund drives have brought in more than $4.4 million since the first annual fund drive in 2000, Sherman said.
The schools that host annual fund drives are also better candidates for grant moneys, she added, since the increased parent participation demonstrated in those schools is an essential requirement for many foundation grants.
Holy Family has a development model in place already, Sherman noted, but the new governance model opens up new possibilities. “I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s going to work. I’ve only ever seen this model in high schools, so I’m really excited,” she said.
Suarez and Sister Connelly both note that high schools differ from elementary schools in culture and governance complexity. But they both feel that trying the model at Holy Family could create a model useful to other elementary schools.
“There’s a change in the culture,” Sister Connelly said. “Parents are struggling, so schools are struggling. Adapting this model for elementary schools is worth trying. This may be the way the job goes in the future.”
Sister Connelly notes that she and Suarez haven’t yet sorted out all of the division of labor in their new governance roles, but she is already sure of one element of her new position: being with children.
“I love to be around kids,” she said, noting that in some administrative positions, such as her former post as associate superintendent of Catholic schools for the diocese, the administrator almost never sees children.
Sister Connelly spent 15 years with the Catholic Schools Department before taking the principal’s position at Holy Family School after the 1996 death of her friend, Holy Family’s former principal, Alice Maxwell. Being back on campus with children was a great joy, she said.
So even though high school presidents have limited contact with students, the elementary school president will arrange her duties in a new way.
“That will be my favorite part of the job — spending time with the children,” Sister Connelly said.
