The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Catholic Schools Week a time to celebrate
Hartford Archdiocese celebrates 53 schools serving broad population
This is a time in which it is especially important to stress faith and values in diverse communities.
This is a time in which it is especially important to stress faith and values in diverse communities, said Michael Griffin, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of Hartford.
“We serve a broad population and … I think the education we offer is different,” Griffin said. “There are a variety of schools, people have a choice these days, but it’s in the Catholic schools that you integrate faith and values on a daily basis.”
Faced with declining enrollment and some closings, Catholic schools emphasize those distinct values, especially during Catholic Schools Week, which this year runs Jan. 29 to Feb. 4.
In the archdiocese’s 53 schools, including nine high schools, “academic excellence is joined with development of the whole child, the whole person — body, mind and spirit,” Griffin said.
Part of that development is service to the wider community.
“We know that over 100,000 hours a year are given in service by our students,” Griffin said.
That may include volunteering in soup kitchens, raising money for Catholic Relief Services, participating in pro-life activities or connecting with veterans or the elderly in nursing homes, Griffin said.
“It is a very important part,” Griffin said of the service aspect. “Sometimes we use the phrase ‘Faith, Knowledge and Service,’” which is the theme of this year’s Catholic Schools Week.
“We’re also able to talk about world issues from a faith and values perspective,” he said.
Griffin recognizes that a declining population and lower participation in churches make an impact on the schools. Enrollment in Catholic schools declined from 1.2 million in 2003-04 to 740,000 in 2013-14, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“There have been some closings in recent years,” Griffin said. “Catholic education across the country has been challenged in enrollment in a changing time.”
But he said students from schools that have had to close “have joined other schools and made them stronger. It’s a challenge to adjust but they find themselves very welcome and at home in other environments.”
The archdiocese’s schools also are diverse, with 28 percent of students coming from black or Hispanic families and “about 20 percent of students who are not Catholic at our schools,” Griffin said.
He said he supports steps to help the schools. “We’d like to see things like interdistrict busing,” he said. This year, a pilot program has been instituted to bus East Haven students to St. Bernadette School in New Haven’s East Shore area.
“We have about 160 [students] in our school; 98 of them come from East Haven and about half of them come on the bus,” said Edward Goad, principal of St. Bernadette. Forty of the students formerly went to St. Vincent de Paul School in East Haven, which is now closed.
St. Bernadette is getting a jump on Catholic Schools Week, with a different activity planned for each day. On Sunday, St. Bernadette celebrated its annual school Mass and open house, Goad said.
Students also will dress as animals or wear animal prints and donate food and treats to the East Haven Animal Shelter. “On Tuesday, we have what’s called Collaboration Day,” Goad said. Older students will pair with younger pupils, dressing as twins for the day, he said.
On Patriotic Day, the students will dress in red, white and blue and go bowling at Circle Lanes in East Haven. On one day, the Special Olympics will be the focus, when students can wear a sports jersey and are asked to donate $1 to the Special Olympics.
Finally, there will is a special person’s lunch, when grandparents or other special people will be invited to share pizza.
While the National Catholic Educational Association sets the theme each year for Catholic Schools Week, “as individual schools we’re able to take that and run with it as best we can because the ideas are generated by students and teachers,” Goad said.
“Because we’re faithbased, we like to do things that make other people feel good.”
Griffin said Catholic Schools Week is “a time across the entire country to celebrate the value and the contributions of our Catholic schools. … Catholic Schools Week helps us to communicate a message at a time when it’s especially important.”