Father Kolbe School to become a parish school

by Mary Helen Sprecher
newsroom@baltimoreguide.com

There might be a new school in town in a few years. But it’s not a charter school, and it’s not a re-opening of one of the soon-to-be-defunct middle schools.

In fact, it’s not really new, come to think of it.

The school is St. Casimir’s, or it will be, when the parish once again takes the reins of the school.

For now, it’s still Father Kolbe School.

The story actually began a long time ago—back in the mid-1970s—when three Catholic schools, St. Casimir, St. Stanislaus and St. Leo, merged into one.

“The primary grades,” said Fr. Ross Syracuse, pastor of St. Casimir, “were housed at St. Stanislaus parish, but the upper grades were at St. Casimir.” The facility became an interparochial school, serving the students of all three parishes, with all three parishes sharing the capital expenses of the school. The resulting school was renamed Fr. Kolbe Interparochial School, after Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, the priest who became a martyr after volunteering to take the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz.

Eventually, both upper and lower grades (preK-8) were housed together in the school building next to St. Casimir Church.

In the late 1990s, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, seeing a need for stabilization and standardization of Catholic education in the area, created the Southeast Baltimore Catholic Academy, or SEBCA.

“The archdiocese wanted to centralize our schools,” said Fr. Ross, “which were at that time Fr. Kolbe, St. Elizabeth, Our Lady of Fatima, Bishop John Neuman and the elementary and high schools of Our Lady of Pompei.”

All those schools, said Fr. Ross, became a part of SEBCA, and were known as SEBCA-Fr. Kolbe Campus, SEBCA-Our Lady of Fatima Campus, and so forth. It was at that time, he said, that Our Lady of Pompei High School moved to the old Holy Rosary School building and became Our Lady of the Rosary High School.

Eventually, St. Elizabeth School merged with Our Lady of Pompei and became Archbishop Borders School. Within a few years, both Bishop John Neuman and Our Lady of the Rosary closed, leaving fewer Catholic schools in the area.

SEBCA, too, ceased to operate, said Fr. Ross.

“Eventually, the purpose for which SEBCA was set up was never realized, and it was closed.”

The remaining schools—Fr. Kolbe, Our Lady of Fatima and Archbishop Borders—became archdiocesan schools around 2001, and remained so.
Fast-forward to 2007, and to big changes and big plans.

“The archdiocese asked (St. Casimir) if we would consider taking the school back as a parish school,” said Fr. Ross, “and the leadership of the parish here decided overwhelmingly that it would be a good idea.”

If all goes according to plan, the parish will assume leadership and responsibility for the school beginning with the 2008-2009 school year.

Having the archdiocese manage the schools was not meant to be a long-term solution, said Fr. Ross; “you just got the sense that was a temporary arrangement.”
Already, said Fr. Ross, St. Casimir’s has an ad hoc school committee which is working on arrangements.

“We’re hoping that one of the things that is going to happen is the formation of a school board—a group made up of a variety of people in different professions,” he said. Ideally, the board would be made of up community members and others who would bring their professional expertise to different aspects of the running of the school such as development, recruitment, education and so on. At the moment, the parish is “in the beginning stages” of putting together its school board.

Elizabeth Phelan, who has been principal of the school for several years now, is expected to remain on.

“That’s not an issue,” said Fr. Ross.

Fr. Kolbe serves about 190 children in grades PreK-8, an enrollment which Fr. Ross said has remained stable “since I’ve been here.”

Overall, he said, the everyday running of the school will not change very much. The parish will accept more financial responsibility for the school, “and the school will be a part of the mission of the parish. One of the things people say about St. Casimir is that it is a welcoming community. This is just another opportunity for us to be welcoming—it’s in keeping with what’s important to us.”

According to Sean Caine, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the changeover to parish school is not the first in the area.

“Last year, Our Lady of Fatima parish accepted the school as a parish school and now Father Kolbe has become a parish school as well. This is a viewed as a sign that pastors and parishes want a true connection to a school. At this time, there are no plans for Archbishop Borders school to become a parish school.”

The changeover from an  school—being the responsibility of several churches—to a one-parish school automatically raises the question: is this a harbinger of the closure of other parishes in the area?

“Oh, no. Not at all,” said Fr. Ross.