Pat Hickey from the Chicago Daily Observer discusses Catholic schools with Superintendant Sr. Mary Paul McCaughey on July 30th. Sr. Mary Paul began leading Archdiocese of Chicago Schools, the largest Catholic School system in the United States, this July.

Hickey- Having directed Marion Catholic one most the Chicago area’s impressive co-educational college prep schools for thirty years, you seem more than up to the challenge of righting the course of Chicago’s Catholic schools, what is your first priority?

McCaughey – I was at Marion for sixteen years, but I will tell you this I believe, Pat, that good schools share some common threads. First is the focus on our mission and our mission is this – the Catholicity and successful academic performance of our people. In order to do that, we need a lot of help. We need to engage their parents, we need to engage our professionals – teachers; we need to engage the community – private foundations; there’s really for me a system that is vital means to be academically excellent. And vital. Vital means to be alive. The life blood of any successful school means to be completely transparent to just be dogged about our mission. To say ‘These are things that we do best; Were going to love our kids with all our heart were going to make an impact on their lives we are going to change society because of the great people and great leaders that we ( Catholic Schools) are going to put out there. So, you can do that on a school basis, but I think that you can also do it on a systemic basis, Now this glass is not half empty, it is more than half full, we have a tremendous tradition, tremendous ownership and we need to just point out what we do well and then tweak that program to make sure that we are who we say we are and then go out and then get the resources to make things better.

Hickey – One of the things that you did you retained great teachers, mentors, coaches developed Marion Catholic a Blue Ribbon School that increased its capacity to serve a diverse community and never compromised for short term fixes.

McCaughey – You can’t! You absolutely cant’s You have to believe that every student can learn to the best of their ability and all of the research shows that everything goes away – socio economic factors, race and etc. fade away in the face of strong curriculum and strong teachers. It might take longer but we get there. It’s transformative – good teaching is transformative. We have the raw materials – good people and good programs. You hear Many people will say’ Oh, the schools, have failed! The schools have failed!’ Well, you know- no one else, showed up for the test! ( laughs) Well, you know our schools are not failing! Catholic Schools are succeeding and its time to get that word and out and to prove it to ourselves and say it to the world and just keep growing.

Hickey – Tell me your first concern.

McCaughey – My first concern, basically, is getting everyone on board. We’re hoping to have an Archdiocesan School Board which will engage more community leaders to help us push the agenda for the Choice of Catholic Education. Second Concern of course is our own internal and external marketing. You should see something happening in August with the return to school – we long awaited that – a more systemic look. While there are a million details the important thing is same that it is in any school – get the right people in place – internally and externally.

Hickey – With that, how important is retaining the great teachers.

McCaughey – You have to retain great teachers, You and I know that you lose great teachers –maybe even with eight, ten years into the system –they would love to stay with Catholic Schools but the public schools offer them beaux coup bucks and how can we compete with that –and I believe that one of the first items that our New Archdiocesan Board is going to have to looks at – especially the finance committee – What the incentives? What re the other things that could help retain teachers. Our teachers stay in system because the rewards are ‘other than’ monetary –we have wonderful professionals who stay –first class teachers who paid far less. They teach because they are mission centered. We have a Mission of Justice too, to make sure that they can raise a family.

Hickey – I have long held the opinion that our Catholic Universities (DePaul, Loyola, St. Xavier, Dominican & etc.) seem more focused on training teachers for the public systems that operate counter to everything that Catholic schools value?

McCaughey –I think we have to ask ourselves and ‘why is that so?’ for some of the universities and I think they would admit that themselves. I started to meet with the Presidents of our Catholic universities . Dominic Carroll of Dominican University and Dennis (Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider) was wonderful at DePaul. I will see them all, including the public universities and they can produce page after page of collaboration with Catholic places and we’ve never said this out loud. You know that DePaul is involved at St. Benedict High School –tremendously; now, Loyola is involved with Leo High School. Dominican has taken over St. Edmund’s school in Oak Park. To develop those partnerships is really a tremendous goal and Boston has done this. One of my goals not just in terms of teacher training, but I talked to the Director of Catholic Charities, but there is a whole panoply of things that families need can be serviced right out of the Catholic schools. One of the most exciting things in the world would be to see these five great Catholic universities in Chicago, not only providing us with first-time teacher training, but on-going professional development. One of my proposals is that the Catholic universities put on a dog-and –pony show of the endless resources they can provide to our schools and the community. I have been received warmly and promptly by our universities every time I make that call.

Hickey – Catholics are the most generous givers in Chicago. A Jewish civic leader once related to me that his father explained that ‘Chicago would be a smoking hole in the ground without Catholic philanthropy and leadership.’

McCaughey – Oh that is so true! Just look at the number of hospitals, social, legal services, pregnancy counseling, and food pantries. Outreach free social services, employment. We are a tremendously Catholic city, Chicago, and – The Mayor, who received me warmly, said we better take care of own and I said , ‘Yes, and we take care of everyone else too.’ And that what we need to continue to do and point out all the wonderful services that Catholics provide – taking care of an AIDS patient that everyone else has forgotten. Our Schools – our high schools in particular do so much in the way of preparing young people for service – Amate House –all young volunteers living almost like a religious order – praying, living and serving together. The work Alexian Brothers Hospital in AIDS services. There is a lot of energy around service for Catholics in Chicago.

Hickey – The Big Shoulders Fund really seems to get short shrift from Chicago’s media. I was particularly taken aback when a few years ago Chicago Magazine ran cover feature on Catholics in Chicago and there was not a sentence giving credit to Big Shoulders for their work in providing education to inner city families – not a sentence .

McCaughey – I just came out of meeting with Jim O’Connor and Josh Hale yesterday and I have great respect for the Big Shoulders. It is true. The Archdiocese gives a humongous amount of money to the inner city but Big Shoulders has done out the complete initiative of its leaders. They have been out there doing things at the ground level whether it is improving enrollment, leadership training, professional development for teachers, deferred maintenance issues, campus improvement as well as proving direct scholarship support to inner city families. I am looking to working more closely with Big Shoulders.

Hickey – Do you believe that being a member of a religious order will have more impact on raising confidence and morale in the Chicago school population?

McCaughey –It could be yes, or no. I think lay people bring a tremendous dimension to service and ministry. Maybe even more credibility, because people are expecting The Nun Thing from me, you know. I think it’s a piece of it – that religious should be doing it and that I have some pretty strongly held views about the role of poverty, availability that religious should have in service to other people. Certainly (being a religious – my own) it frees my time and commitment to be able to do what I love and I have tremendous support from own religious community. But would never say that it has been an advantage or disadvantage – due to perceived turmoil in the Church that I walk around wearing – ‘Look at her – the Little Sister – you know, ‘Penguin Party time!’ You do not want to be just touted as a professional. There are some pluses.

Hickey- One of the reasons for that questions, for the last decade, particularly with foundations there was great deal of Chicago Public School Outreach to Catholic Schools in reforming their sorry situation and – ideas and method – that resulted in the mega-foundations Gates, Oprah, MacArthur, Joyce & etc. shifted giving priorities in education directly to systemic public school reform followed by traditionally helpful private foundations doing the same and thus eroding support traditionally given in direct support to Catholic schools. Quaker Oats, People Gas , and so many others followed suit. Giving priorities changed and more private dollars went to tax-payer funded public schools and away from Catholic schools.

McCaughey – Here’s the way to do it. Catholic Vouchers! Create a Catholic school voucher system – internally. Who knows if we’ll ever get the political action needed to push real vouchers, but that is more of long-term battle. The Catholic community’s foundation, the grant makers, the movers and shakers – say ‘here are kids that need an education – here’s the money and they can go anywhere they want. I would put Catholic Schools against any schools in the world for working toward opportunity!

Hickey – But how do we rattle the cage of this money hoarding by public schools – tax-payer funded entities – and the private foundations giving to a those systems.

McCaughey – Tax-funded entities like public schools have presented these private foundations with a compelling need – even well-to-do school districts – and convinced these private foundations of the need to reform. I think for us is to tell the story more effectively –What is it they say? CPS spend $ 10,000 plus per student. Hello ! Well do it for $5,000. Hey! We’ll do it for half and better! By having that money follow that child, from grammar school through high school, it will take care of enrollment figures and other issues, but teacher salaries will always be a challenge. Parents really want Catholic education but simply can not afford it; now, it has becomes a responsibility for the entire Catholic community. The thought that scared me to death was just that if every Catholic family gave up the price of a latte a week, our Catholic schools would no longer be in crisis.

Of course with our own internal philanthropy, including the private foundations, these are things that really need to be looked at some of it marketing, some of it is information. We need to take our message out into the community – some one doing this every day. Like the Big Shoulders Fund get people who give to the schools and see where the value of Catholic Schools lies.

Hickey – Dovetailing on this issue, the burden on parishioners. Do you believe that real School Choice – Vouchers – will become a reality?

McCaughey – Vouchers would be a tremendous way of easing the burden on our families, but there is so much opposition. I think getting federal and state money is difficult, because we will always be perceived as the country club – the option – and that is a pervasive mentality, even with our folks in the suburbs who pay huge taxes on huge mortgages on big homes, who are not sending their children to Catholic schools and we need to ask ourselves that – are they too trapped with our public school system financially that middle class families have little money left for Catholic Schools. You can not say that any one school system is the answer, not can you say that any one issue will be the answer.

Hickey – How can Catholic Schools, not only retain great veteran teachers, but attract vital, athletic, well-read and devout young teachers?

McCaughey- The key is the continual engagement, not just to have mentors, that find enough satisfaction there, enough spiritual life there, a community that says ‘this is my life’s work – not just an annual trip to Appalachia or the Third World – not my ‘Three Year Commitment’ but something that is a life’s work. I think that even if we lose a young teacher for a couple of years – that the mission might lure them back. Changing the perception – including the people who re-up – we should be recruiting teachers out of the best and the brightest into our schools – particularly this very service oriented Millennium Generation.

This is revitalization of the parish life itself. We are the school is vital and the parish is vital. It is a sacrifice it is an investment. We have such an advantage to unabashedly say ‘Hey these schools are the best thing that we have going and let’s do it! It is not a big deal!’ We have great total engagement in our parish schools.

Hickey – I believe that Catholic Schools are in great hands with you. There are so many great people who do so much for schools on a daily basis and never really get much attention. This week The Leo Alumni Association holds its annual golf outing that brings in thousands of dollars along with individual contributions of $ 50 and up to $ 500,000 to Leo – Mount Carmel the same – generations away from the school but still so much a part of it.

McCaughey- That is Quiet Service we don’t flaunt it enough. That is something we should do more of. Cardinal Mundelein was militant and I think that we can recapture that spirit in its best sense. . Cardinal George really wants our schools to survive – the fact that no schools have closed, despite the financial setbacks, but through the Archdiocese, The Big Shoulders and others we can make things happen, but now our nest step is make sure that each one of our places that we’re serving the kids in the best way. We are going to need to look at long-range planning and we won’t view it as not just patching things up – if a building a multi-million dollar school makes sense –well, let’s do it !.