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Belleville Catholic Schools on Move

Catholic Education Initiative to Conduct Survey in Parishes and On-line

By LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

The Catholic Education Initiative for the Belleville Catholic schools, in its second year of a three-year process, is asking parishioners in the eight Belleville parishes to join the discussion on-line or through their parishes.

Public meetings were held in March and October of 2006, but Feb. 3-4, surveys will be distributed in parishes and available on-line to answer a series of questions about Catholic education, Sister Ann Marie Bonvie, SSND, the consultant facilitating the process, said.

“Every parishioner is being asked to complete a survey, and surveys will also be sent to parents,” Sister Bonvie said.

The surveys were developed through committees that were formed to study five areas of Catholic education, including: academics, Catholic identity and community, finance, personnel and student services.

The committees, made up of representatives from the Belleville parishes, researched the five areas and, with a joint committee, have produced the survey that is being distributed to parents and parishes.

The committees, whose chairs also serve on a joint committee, again with representation from the parishes, “are responsible for looking for the best way to provide Catholic education in that area and make a practical recommendation as to what will work and what won’t work,” Sister Bonvie said.

Besides gathering data, the committees will gather comments and opinions through the responses to the city-wide survey.

These comments will be used to formulate their recommendation to the joint committee in their particular area — academics, Catholic identity, finance personnel and student services.

A teacher survey is also posted on-line to look at teacher practices and preparation.

The survey will add important information to the already-gathered data as the committees write their recommendations.

When this initiative was begun, “pastors and principals believed that parishes could not sustain the current structure of maintaining schools in their present form,” Sister Bonvie said. “They want to provide Catholic education into the future.

Presently, the committees are looking at three theoretical models to help them decide what “could be,” Sister Bonvie said as she outlined the models.

One is parish-based, maintaining what is, or reaffirming the current model; the second model would provide for voluntary cooperation among the schools, called the confederated model; and the third, would provide for centralized leadership, multiple delivery sites and a centralized use of resources, called the unified model.

None of these models is being adopted, but they give committee members different ways to look at how Catholic education could be delivered in the future.

“There’s a lot of potential to be creative with a model, and they could use parts of all three models” in their recommendation, she said.

While the committees have been meeting separately, they will spend March 24 together, using it as a work day to write a proposal on how to deliver Catholic education to Belleville Catholic students.

Committee members will draw up the proposed recommendation based on the comments and feedback they receive from the surveys and will present it to the public at 7 p.m. April 17 for comments and feedback.

The joint committee will then look at the information gathered at that meeting and make any changes to the recommendation they see necessary.

Pastors and principals will review the recommendation at a 2 p.m. meeting May 9 at the pastoral center in Belleville.
After the review, any necessary changes will be made and the recommendation will be presented to the bishop for his approval.

Only after the bishop accepts the recommendation can discussions about implementing the recommendation move forward, Sister Bonvie said.

“We recognize the anxiety that a study like this generates, and we encourage people to trust the process,” Sister Bonvie said.

The steering committee that began the process included two priests: Fathers John Venegoni of St Teresa’s and John Myler of St. Mary’s; and two principals: Claire Hatch of Blessed Sacrament and Sister Bernadette Miller, DC, of St. Augustine’s.

During the first year of the process, Sister Kathleen Wegman, principal of Queen of Peace School was also a consultant, but in the second year of the initiative, Sister Wegman withdrew, and Sister Kathleen Koenen, SSND, associate director of elementary education for the diocese, is playing a more active role with the committees.

To be part of the on-going discussion, Sister Bonvie said she wants “everyone who has an interest in Catholic education to complete one of the surveys.”

To complete the survey on-line go to www.catholicei.org. For more information about the initiative in Belleville, contact your parish.