Catholic identity is foundation of schools

St. Matthew School principal Barby Magness, left, Father Mark Beckman, and others cut the ribbon for the new athletic field dedicated at the school in 2009. Opened in 2001, St. Matthew is one of the largest and fastest growing schools in the Diocese of Nashville. The only Catholic school in Williamson County, it is a big draw for many new families moving to the area.

Theresa Laurence
Andy Telli, Tennessee Register

In the early days of the diocese, a Catholic school was often no more than a young woman teaching a handful of students in a one-room log cabin; tuition was paid with spare change.

Catholic schools today, with kindergartners using iPads and young men playing football inside multi-million dollar athletic complexes, may seem a long way from these humble roots, but the core values of Catholic education have not changed.

“In all of our schools, Catholic identity is our strongest element,” said Dr. Therese Williams, superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Nashville. “I think we live it. We really model it for our students. We give them the opportunity to be active in their church.”

From Nashville to the suburbs to small towns scattered around the diocese, Catholic schools continue to offer a high quality education and serve as ambassadors of the faith to the community at large.

Barby Magness, principal of St. Matthew School in Franklin, tells the story of a non-Catholic mother who learned of the school from seeing students come into her dental office, so neat and well-behaved in their St. Matthew uniforms. “She decided she wanted that for her son and they’ve been extremely happy here,” said Magness.

Families living in Williamson County have access to an excellent public school system, but some still find it lacking, and often discover what’s missing at St. Matthew “They want a Catholic, faith-based education,” said Magness. “There’s none other like it,” added Magness, who worked for both independent private schools and in the public school system before becoming St. Matthew’s first principal.

Tennessee Register file photo by Theresa Laurence

Angie Smotherman, sixth grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Madison, helps her students with a class assignment. Smotherman graduated from the teacher education program at Aquinas College and said she benefited from the Dominican Sisters’ approach to teaching in Catholic schools.

One of the newest schools in the diocese, St. Matthew, opened in 2001, is also one of its biggest success stories. It grew to capacity ahead of schedule and remains nearly full year after year. There are currently only a handful of open slots in the whole school. But even with this good fortune comes some challenges. “Sometimes we can’t take a whole family if we don’t have space for all the children,” Magness said. “We hurt in that way,” she said.

Even in wealthy Williamson County, paying $5,000 a year for tuition can be a hurdle for some families. “We have a higher percentage of families seeking tuition assistance than ever before,” Magness said. “Some families have lost big jobs and had to move,” she said, but “more are moving in.”

Attracting students is not much of a challenge for St. Matthew the way it is for older schools located far from the diocese’s headquarters in Nashville.

“We’re always trying to recruit,” said Kelly Doyle, principal of Good Shepherd School in Decherd, Tenn., in the far southeast corner of the diocese. “We lost students two years in a row, but we’re up 13 students from last year so I feel optimistic,” she said. Thirteen is a big leap when there are only 74 students in the entire pre-K through seventh grade school. This year, there is no eighth grade class at Good Shepherd.

A fixture in the area for over a century, Good Shepherd enjoys a good reputation in the community, but faces plenty of competition. A new private school, Winchester Christian Academy, just opened nearby, and the local public school system now offers pre-K. “That has changed the dynamics,” Doyle said.

One of the smallest schools in the diocese, Good Shepherd is not able to offer much tuition assistance to its families, but works hard to keep Catholic education affordable. They do have one of the lowest tuition costs of any school in the diocese, but still “tuition is the biggest roadblock” to boosting enrollment, Doyle said. 

Catholic and non-Catholic families alike are attracted to Good Shepherd because of the small class sizes and sense of family at the school. “It’s a very joyful place,” Doyle said. About half of the students at Good Shepherd are not Catholic, she added.

Catholic identity

It is not uncommon at the more rural schools to have such a high percentage of non-Catholic students. St. Paul in Tullahoma, for example, has a similar balance of students. Of the Diocese of Nashville’s approximately 6,300 students enrolled in the 18 elementary and three high schools, less than 1,000 are not Catholic. Most schools charge higher tuition rates for non-Catholics, but parents are willing to pay the price because they see the value of a Christian education.

Catholic elementary schools in small towns like Decherd, Tullahoma, McEwen, Lawrenceburg and Loretto play a unique role in their communities, said Father Stephen Klasek, pastor of St. Paul Parish in Tullahoma. They can evangelize the non-Catholic students and are the primary reinforcement of Catholic identity for young people. 

In the Nashville area there are other Catholic institutions that help build the Catholic identity for young people, such as the three high schools, the SEARCH program, Camp Marymount and others, Father Klasek said. Even though the Catholic population in the Nashville metropolitan area is a small minority, it is still big enough to support people’s sense of a Catholic identity, he said.

But in most of the smaller towns of Middle Tennessee, Catholics are an even smaller minority and can feel isolated. The Catholic infrastructure present in Nashville is not as strong in the smaller towns, said Father Klasek, so the Catholic elementary schools play a crucial role in reinforcing children’s Catholic identity.

“In smaller towns, schools are the only institution that we can control and offer that goes beyond what the parish can do in maintaining that (Catholic) identity,” he said.

“This is the commitment they’ve made to maintaining their Catholic identity for their kids,” Father Klasek said, even in situations where at first glance it doesn’t make financial sense to have a Catholic school. Building Catholic identity is “a powerful incentive to keep these schools open.”

“The parish just probably couldn’t imagine not having a school,” Father Klasek said.

Counter-cultural message

Tennessee Register file photo by Andy Telli

Father Ryan High School senior Courtney Panther and junior Cole Pickney, photo at right, help fill some of the Ladies of Charity Christmas food baskets last December. More than 770 food baskets were distributed to needy families for Christmas through various parishes and agencies in the Nashville area. All Catholic schools in the Diocese of Nashville encourage service to others and the high schools require students to complete service hours every academic year.

The mission of Catholic schools is first and foremost to educate students and shape the faith of Catholic young people, to develop the whole child in the image of Christ.

“We are helping them to know the person of Jesus Christ and understand themselves in light of that,” said Sister Mary Thomas, O.P., principal of St. Cecilia Academy. St. Cecilia emphasizes to its students that they and every other human person are made in the image and likeness of God, and “we allow that vision of faith to imbue everything else,” Sister Mary Thomas said. 

Whether their schools are big or small, new or old, Catholic school principals are quick to tout their family-like atmosphere.

“Community is the word I always use to describe Father Ryan,” said school president Jim McIntyre.

No matter if the student’s last name gives them away as a fourth generation legacy at the school or they are a newcomer, every student is a part of the school’s rich history. “New families very quickly have that same sense of belonging and feeling like part of the community,” said McIntyre.

Catholic school today serve as sort of a safe haven from the constant barrage of negative messages young people receive from outside influences.

In earlier decades “the culture outside (of school) was what we were learning in the school,” said Catherine Bradley, who attended Sacred Heart School in Loretto as a child and is now its principal. “Now we teach counter culture.”

Catholic beliefs such as that a marriage lasts for your life, and Catholics should attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, today don’t fit with the message of the broader culture that students and teachers live in. “What we teach now is not what the world teaches, as far as major values,” said Bradley, who started teaching at Sacred Heart in 1969 and has been principal since 1994.

When she was a child, what the students learned at Sacred Heart was what they saw practiced in the community, she said.

Catholic schools are places “where the faith is lived out and the moral life is honored,” said Pope John Paul II Headmaster Faustin Weber. At JPII, like all Catholic schools, prayer is interwoven throughout the day and the student body celebrates Mass together every week. All students participate in service projects every year. “The practice of the faith is so prevalent” at JPII, Weber said, “it’s almost like breathing.”

Catholic high schools have a particular mission to help teenagers own their faith and keep it with them as they prepare for college and beyond. High school students are at a crossroads, poised to decide “whether their faith is going to be an artifact from their childhood or integral to their life as adults,” Weber said.

Addressing affordability

Tennessee Register file photo by Theresa Laurence

The inaugural Italian Lights Festival was held in 2010 to benefit St. Pius X Classical Academy. To keep tuition affordable, Catholic schools must find creative ways to fundraise and market to the community.

As Catholic schools have changed over the decades, new challenges have arisen, particularly the cost of a Catholic education, Williams said. While Catholic schools offer a top notch education and great opportunities for students, they still remain out of reach for many families.

“We have to get creative” in addressing the issue of affordability, Williams said. “It’s a real discussion. It’s a fine line between fair and just wages for teachers and not raising tuition too high.”

Every school offers some form of tuition assistance, she said.

Tuition does not cover the full cost of operating Catholic schools, Williams said, so schools must look for other sources of revenue. Some schools look for donors to sponsor children who need tuition assistance and schools seek support from the broader community, asking people to give back to the schools, she added.

Catholic schools ask those families who can pay the full cost of the tuition to pay and allow others to receive a reduction, Williams said. Some diocesan schools have students who qualify for free and reduced lunch programs, she said, and some provide donated books and uniforms for families that need the help. Other schools offer tuition discounts for families with more than one child enrolled in school.

“Schools do a lot of little things that assist families,” she said.

The only diocesan wide tuition assistance offered is through the Endowment for the Advancement of Catholic Schools, and the amount distributed each year, between $15,000-$20,000, falls far below requests from the schools, which annually exceeds $100,000.

Catholic schools continue to reach out to lower income families, Williams said. “It’s part of our mission to serve everyone.”

Welcoming newcomers

One segment of the Catholic population that is conspicuously absent from Catholic schools is Hispanics. Hispanic immigrants have the highest birth rate but have not enrolled their children in Catholic schools in any great numbers. In fact, there are only about 200 Hispanic children enrolled in the entire diocesan school system.

“If all the Catholic Hispanics sent their kids to Catholic schools, our schools would be overflowing,” said Father Klasek, who is also director of pastoral planning for the diocese and recently finished compiling the diocese’s quinquennial report, which gives an overview of the state of the Diocese of Nashville. 

Father Klasek suspects the practice of Hispanic families using public schools rather than Catholic schools, even those from heavily Catholic countries, is a tradition they have brought to the United States from their homeland where parish schools aren’t as common.

Catholic school administrators have to be patient and continue to invite Hispanic families to consider sending their children to a Catholic school, Williams said.

“We have to educate this first generation what Catholic schools offer their children,” Williams said. “It’s a culture they have to learn the value of,” she said. And, “We need to learn more about their traditions and they need to learn more about our schools.”

Faith formation and helping immigrants assimilate into American society and the American church are still viable and valuable goals for Catholic schools, Williams said.

Growth and change

As the Catholic population moves out of neighborhoods and into others, it can pose challenges for diocesan schools. When some schools were built, there was a thriving Catholic community living in the neighborhood and keeping the schools filled, Williams said. But as Catholics have left those neighborhoods, it puts a strain on the school’s enrollment.

For some schools, that has meant attracting students from other nearby parishes, Williams said. For example, St. Joseph School in Madison draws a large number of its students from Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Hendersonville, and Holy Rosary Academy in Donelson draws significant numbers of students from St. Stephen parish in Old Hickory.

On the other hand, “some of our most populated areas don’t have Catholic schools,” Williams said. “How do we need to address that?”

Williamson County has four parishes, some among the largest in the diocese, but only one Catholic school, St. Matthew. However, other Catholic schools recruit families from Williamson County, Williams said, noting that St. Edward School, Christ the King School and St. Bernard Academy all have large numbers of students who live in Williamson County. In fact, she added, St. Bernard provides bus service from Brentwood to its campus in Hillsboro Village.

“The areas where we don’t have Catholic schools are where we’re hurting,” Williams said.

As Catholic schools in the Diocese of Nashville look to the future, they will continue to grapple with the always-present tuition conundrum, look at where to possibly add new schools, and how to support struggling schools. All the while, diocesan schools will continue to teach the counter-cultural gospel message of service to others.

All the schools encourage service, and the diocesan high schools require students to participate in service projects every academic year. “It encourages young people to be living examples of the gospel and active participants in their faith,” McIntyre said. “The more they live out their faith, the more likely they are to maintain and keep it.”

While the broader culture may espouse an “Every man for himself” philosophy, Magness said, the emphasis at St. Matthew, and all Catholic schools is doing unto others. “That’s what’s so unique about Catholic education,” she said. “I don’t think you get that anywhere else.”