The Principal’s Team
Teaching Staff
Teachers are the front line of the school and key to the success of each student, as they form the curriculum and instructional teams. As expected, the size of a school’s teaching staff varied with enrollment counts. The largest schools employ over 85 full-time teachers while some of the smallest schools retain less then five full-time teachers. Overall, the reported average is 20 teachers (17 fulltime and 3 parttime) and 4 instructional assistants.
Hispanic/Latino Identity
Among surveyed schools, the highest percentage of teachers who identify as Hispanic is in the West and the lowest percentage is in the Midwest. See listing below:
TABLE 3
PERCENTAGES OF TEACHING STAFF WHO ARE HISPANIC/LATINO(A)
Targeted Recruitment of Staff
Respondents recognize the need to hire Hispanic teachers staff, and preferably those who are bilingual (English/Spanish). Seventeen percent of schools surveyed use intentional strategies to recruit bilingual staff. This approach is more common in the West (27%) and Midwest (18%) than in the Northeast (13%) or the South (11%).
Descriptions of these bilingual staffing strategies included: targeting Spanish-speaking job candidates by adding “bilingual preferred/required” to job postings (29%) and considering the ability to speak Spanish during the hiring process (9%). Résumés are screened for bilingualism, or interview questions inquire about language skills. Occasionally mentioned strategies included publicizing in the Hispanic community, word-of-mouth recommendations for potential hires, and posting jobs in Spanish.
Professional Development for Second Language Acquisition
Also recognized is the need to support second language acquisition and an average of 26% respondents reported providing staff with professional development opportunities. This was most likely in the Midwest (38%), followed by the West (35%), the South (23%), and the Northeast (17%).
School leaders most frequently described these opportunities as providing financial support for professional development, including language classes. However, most did not elaborate on the frequency of use or the effectiveness of this approach. Other strategies listed included: access to language-learning software, such as Rosetta Stone or Transparent Language; ELL/ESL pedagogical training; language instruction led by the school Spanish teacher, school personnel, or parish staff; courses at area colleges; and professional development through the public school system.
Governance
Effective school governance is vital to the success of an excellent school.25 While school leaders, faculty, and staff are essential to Catholic schools, their work is either supported or inhibited by current governance structures. The majority of responding schools (84%) have a governing board, with 69% reporting advisory boards and 16% reporting consultative boards. This data mirrors the national picture.26 In this structure, the canonical leaders, most often pastors, are actively involved in the governance and are solely responsible for final decisions. These boards assist with advice. A small percentage of schools (10%), all sponsored by religious orders, reported other governing models: 4% report to boards of trustees and 6% report to boards of limited jurisdiction—or boards of lay leaders with official authority over school policy, finances, and governance.27
Currently in some arch/dioceses, new models are emerging, allowing pastors to participate in the life of the school while lay boards assume authority and the responsibilities of policy development and holding school leaders accountable. The steady decline in the number of priests in the country requires a reassessment of the role of the pastor in the life of the school. For instance, the number of parishes without resident pastors has steadily increased in recent years. Today 20% of all U.S. parishes are without a resident pastor.28 An immediate consequence is the increasing number of parishes and schools being consolidated, thus giving rise to new governance models where multiple parishes share one pastor, one board, and sponsor one school. Twenty-eight percent of responding schools are supported by two or more parishes. Fifteen percent of respondents reported school mergers or realignments, with the most of these (53%) in the West and the South. About half of these realignments occurred between 2008 and 2015. This pattern mirrors national trends reported by the NCEA, which recently identified 12% of all schools in the country as inter-parish schools.29
Governance boards are a critical voice and component of leadership. Membership should be diverse and represent the population served.30 On average the boards of responding schools have nine members, with a few schools indicating boards of more than 30 members. Only 23% of these boards have three or more members who self-identify as Hispanic/Latino while 33% have one or two members, and over 35% indicate no member is of Hispanic/Latino background.
Securing a diversity of voices on the board increases the level of awareness about issues that ordinarily may not be evident. For example, when asked if specific targeted financial/enrollment activities for Hispanic families are undertaken by the board, only 1 in 4 schools responded “yes.” Most of these few schools (36%) are located in the South and the smallest percentage (14%) in the Northeast. When asked whether their local arch/dioceses encouraged the recruitment of Hispanic board members, the majority (58%) responded that they “did not know” and only 7% answered “yes.” Nonetheless, several principals reported that the Catholic school office was most likely to provide recruitment programs for Hispanic board members.
Catholic School Culture(s)
Catholic schools are called to be spaces with a robust Catholic culture and worldview that is evident in all curriculum and instruction…and fosters the desire to seek wisdom and truth with a preference for social justice.31 Students and families also bring their own cultural worldviews and thus the school becomes a place where the cultures of the Church and the community meet. Culture is manifested in signs, symbols, and ways of thinking and behaving. Key areas in which the cultural commitment to mission is often visible are the expressions of genuine hospitality extended to all families and a curriculum rooted in Gospel values. Culture is mediated by the practices, convictions, symbols, and languages of those who embody it. Accordingly, this research examined the extent to which Hispanic cultures are intentionally acknowledged, integrated, and celebrated in Catholic schools serving Hispanic families. The environmental signs and symbols, liturgical/worship practices, and programming to support and welcome Hispanic families in the school community were explored with respondents.
Signs
