Investing in Inner-City Education

It’s not too often that invitations to the Water Club come across my desk, so that was one reason to consider attending last week’s event. That the evening was billed “Investing in Futures: Creating a Transformative Educational Experience for Inner-City Children” was another. And the third was that the main speakers were Geoffrey T. Boisi and Russell L. Carson, two business leaders who are experts on the topic, to say the least.

St. Aloysius School in Harlem organized the Feb. 15 gathering of 50 or so supporters of inner-city Catholic education with the sponsorship of Daniel and Kathleen Denihan. You may remember that last year St. Aloysius changed from a parish school to an independent Catholic school sponsored by the Jesuits of the New York Province.

Jane B. O’Connell, president of the Altman Foundation, who served as moderator, suggested several questions at the outset. Among them were: Why do donors support Catholic schools? Why are Catholic schools important? And how important is quality in education?

As the two supporters of inner-city Catholic education spoke, Ms. Altman got her answers and then some.

Carson is a co-founder of the Endowment Fund for Inner-City Catholic Schools, now known as the Partnership for Inner-City Education. When it comes to countering the effects of racial inequality, poverty and other societal ills, Carson said he believes that “the best thing that you can do societally is to get a kid a good education.”

That said, Carson pointed to enrollment statistics that backed up his statement that the Catholic school system in inner-city neighborhoods in the archdiocese has been “steadily eroding” over the past 20 years. Dr. Timothy McNiff, the archdiocesan superintendent of schools, who was present, told Carson that his numbers were correct.

Carson also spoke about the success of the charter-school model, utilizing a playbook that emphasizes discipline, school uniforms and the active involvement of parents focused. All those attributes were at one time the almost exclusive province of Catholic schools. Carson also added another quality that he said separates Catholic and regular public schools from charter schools: the ability to hire and fire principals and teachers.

Boisi is chairman of the board of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management and is himself a graduate of Catholic schools. He started off by saying that Catholic schools are “one of the great contributions” of the Church in the United States.

Two attributes that once set Catholic schools apart were that they were “mission-directed” and enjoyed maximum parental involvement, Boisi said. Both areas have faltered in the past two or three decades, he said.

“Unless we get back to that, we are going to be in trouble,” Boisi said.

Catholic schools must learn to communicate better with other, so they can learn from each other’s successes and failures, Boisi explained. He also emphasized utilizing the talents of school parents and others on lay-led boards that would focus on accountability and striving for excellence.

A couple of days later, I had an opportunity to speak with Dr. McNiff, who took up points raised by both speakers. Regarding Boisi’s comments about lay leadership in schools, Dr. McNiff said, “If you don’t start bringing in the laity and tapping their talents, we’re going to fall short.”

Following up on comments that Carson made about public funding of Catholic schools, Dr. McNiff agreed that “public funding has to be one of the antidotes to our problems.”

Dr. McNiff also said today’s donors to Catholic schools have different expectations than those just a decade ago. “They are looking for a return on their generosity, not to themselves, but by institutions doing what say they will do.”

He said the success of some charter schools in terms of accountability, transparency and “keeping the bar high” means that donors are increasingly raising those issues with Catholic schools.

“How can you argue with those things?” Dr. McNiff said, noting that the Catholic school system in the archdiocese was not “afraid to think outside the box” to accomplish its objectives.