Board of directors to lead Trinity Catholic
STAMFORD — A board of directors will now make decisions on tuition rates, budgeting and other matters at Trinity Catholic High School.
“The new governance model is a major step forward as we work to redesign our schools and plan for the future,” Bishop Frank Caggiano said in a statement. “The model will help to promote investment and innovation and to contribute to the overall transformation of Catholic education in our diocese.”
According to a press release issued by Trinity Catholic, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport will continue to sponsor the school and provide global vision.
A nine-person board of directors will provide oversight and decisionmaking authority for matters at the school, including finances, facilities, admission, tuition rates, marketing and other planning and strategic matters. Each board member will oversee a committee assigned to a specific area of business. The committees will be comprised of six to 10 teachers, parent representatives and other professionals with expertise in relevant fields.
A school spokesman said Pat Brady, head of school for Trinity Catholic and the Catholic Academy, will continue the day-to-day management of both schools, alongside Trinity principal Scott Smith and Catholic Academy principal Natalia Cruz.
Members of the board include Merrill Lynch Senior Vice President Roger Fox, corporate tax executive and CPA Harold Spitzfaden, International Paper director of trust investments Carol Tusch, People’s Bank Senior Vice President Matt Murphy, Sacred Heart education professor Darcy Ronan, Eastern Land Management president Bruce Moore Jr., attorney Frank Browne, AFF Advisors founder Anthony Fernandez and Nancy Grimm, who has a background in classical education and will serve as a representative of the school’s new classical academy, Cardinal Kung.
Fox will serve as the board’s chairman and Spitzfaden as vice-chairman. Steven Cheeseman, superintendent of schools for the diocese of Bridgeport, Brady, Smith and Cruz will serve as ex-officio board members.
Of the nine board members, two have children who have attended Trinity Catholic.
Trinity Catholic is the second of five Catholic high schools in the diocese to shift to this new governance model, according to the press release. The Catholic Academy of Stamford adopted this model when it formed in 2017.
Caggiano said the shift represents a change in the authority of the board over Trinity Catholic.
“Given the strong business and Catholic school background of the individual directors, we have only the highest expectations for Trinity Catholic High School and the Catholic Academy of Stamford’s future,” Caggiano said in a statement.
The new board of directors will assume responsibility on July 1. Caggiano said a majority of the board members already serve on the Catholic Academy’s board.
This is the most recent in a series of major changes at Trinity Catholic. The school recently completed the second phase of a renovation project, which added new classrooms, administrative offices, a guidance wing and a center for the school’s new Learning Center to the building. Trinity Catholic students were relocated to the second and third floors of the building. The Catholic Academy’s upper school with sixththrough eighth-graders are expected to relocate to the lower floors of the building next fall.