Anonymous donors provide for teachers

Starting July 27, the system, now consisting of nine schools, will operate on a year-round calendar, with two-week breaks interspersed around 10-week quarters. The traditional summer will be replaced by four weeks off, running next year from June 24 to July 22.

“I’ve never made so much teaching school,” said Hannah Roerick, fourthgrade teacher at Resurrection Catholic School. “The yearlong calendar is excellent. In fact, every school in the Jubilee Network was asked, and every one said yes.”

David Hill, executive director of the Jubilee Network, would not comment on the size of the donation or the donors.

However, he did say that getting teacher pay commensurate with starting pay in Shelby County Schools was a critical step for teachers who already teach 30 minutes longer per day than most teachers, and now will be adding 20 work days to the year.

“We have had generous funding that’s made it possible to launch this and get us going in a newer, finer direction,” he said.

The expectation from the donors, he said, “is that to get our schools where they need to be for years and years to come, we have to really pick up our development effort.”

He would not comment on starting pay for teachers under the current pay scale. Several people familiar with the system, including a Jubilee principal, said teachers start at $30,000 or less.

Shelby County Schools pays starting teachers $42,089. The Jubilee raises take effect Wednesday.

The calendar is the latest manifestation of the changes Hill is making in the Jubilee network. Archbishop Terry Steib separated the network from the rest of the diocese’s 20 schools in November and added Memphis Catholic High and Middle.

Hill named Didier Aur headmaster at Memphis Catholic. Aur is a Brazilian who moved to Memphis in 1966 when his father, Dr. John Aur, became the first oncologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“What we need to do is make sure the Education That Works model remains on solid ground, that we get enough businesses involved with the internships to keep it viable,” Aur said.

Enrollment at Memphis Catholic, once a prominent Catholic boys high school here, is a fraction of what it used to be. The number of students is 220 this year for the six-grade campus in Midtown.

The Education That Works program means that every high school student is assigned a paid internship and works off-site on Fridays. The school can’t measurably expand enrollment without expanding the number of businesses involved.

“We also have to make sure we have outstanding academics,” Aur said. “We need to set ourselves apart like the other Catholic high schools: Immaculate Conception, St. Agnes, Christian Brothers and St. Benedict. They have excellent academics. That’s what we need to do. We want to take our test results, which are good, to excellent this year.”

The donors are pitching in to offset operating costs, including utility costs. Monthly tuition costs for students will remain at $660, but parents will pay for 11 months instead of 10.

“While a few families are full pay, the majority receive deeply discounted tuition that is determined on a sliding scale based on household income,” said Nikki Tubbs, the network’s new head of development. Many families pay only $50 a month, she said, because of the generosity of donors.

The first Jubilee School, St. Augustine, reopened in July 1999 with 26 kindergarten students. Enrollment has held steady for several years at 1,400.

The template for the new calendar comes from St. John’s, the Jubilee school at 2718 Lamar that has operated on a 200-day schedule since it opened.

Barbara Prescott, a longtime education advocate here, sees plenty of merit in a year-round system.

“We know our kids lose ground in the summer; I just don’t know if there would be the will on the part of the school districts,” she said, “although it is happening around the state and country, really.”

SCS board member Stephanie Love expects the costs of extending the year could “even out” with shorter breaks in the school calendar during the rest of the year. “I am for it. The lights are on in the schools all summer, and people are there,” she said. “Anything we can do to improve literacy and the graduation rate and our children being on grade-level, I support.”