| St. John of the Cross | Queen of Peace | St. David |
“Working Together to Provide Quality, Catholic Education in our Neighborhood”
October 2009
On September 29, 2009 the Steering Committees from St. David, St. John of the Cross and Queen of Peace Parishes met at St. John of the Cross School. The first item on the agenda was to tour the school. Each school, in turn, will be toured. This being accomplished we then went into our meeting.
At this meeting someone from each committee reported on the strengths and challenges of their school. The programs for each school were made known. A discussion concerning the program and facilities then took place.
Based on what we received from our presentations from the School Study Committees and the Steering Meeting Discussion, the following assumptions about the future of Catholic Education in this area were made.
- Running individual parish schools is currently financially challenging
- Each parish wants to have a share in a parish school; simply closing is not a good option
- We face changing demographics – Number of Catholic families is declining in the area
- Families value Catholic education but face financial limitations
- Affordable, quality Catholic education will not be self-sustaining based on tuition. Marketing and Development will be vital to continued growth of the school.
- By pooling our resources, we will continue to maintain quality Catholic education
- We have to work to make parish identity strong, separate from school identity
- We three parishes want to create a school where we can all feel equally connected
Our next scheduled committee meeting will be on October 19 after which more information will follow.