Catholic Schools Chief Brings Ideas to Bush

By Linda Conner Lambeck, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport

May 14–BRIDGEPORT — In Sister Angela Gertesema’s class at St. Raphael School on Frank Street, first- graders learn catechism to a rap beat, clapping their hands and swaying their hips.

Margaret Dames, the superintendent of schools for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, pops her head into the room and looks as though she’d like to join in.

“Hello boys and girls,” she whispers, offering a wave and a broad smile.

On the job two and a half years, Dames is small enough in stature — at 5 feet, 1 inches tall — to blend in with a class of seventh-graders headed down a hallway.

But her reach belies her physical stature, extending all the way to the White House last month.

Dames was one of 10 Catholic educators who traveled to the executive mansion’s west wing to participate in a roundtable discussion with President Bush and U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings on April 13.

The topic: How to keep Catholic schools from closing.

Nationwide, Catholic school enrollment is on the decline. Last year, total enrollment at the church’s schools dropped 1.8 percent to 2.4 million.

Catholic school enrollment in Connecticut also has fallen. In the Bridgeport diocese, the enrollment of 10,988 students is 3 percent off 2003 figures, but 53 higher this year than last year, said David Vosberg, head of fundraising and marketing for the parochial school system.

The Bridgeport diocese has 39 schools throughout Fairfield County, which are divided into four clusters. The local cluster, made up of six schools in Bridgeport, is called the Cathedral Cluster. Its enrollment over the past two years is up by 9 percent, to 1,375 students. Diocese officials credit their improvement efforts as much as parents seeking an alternative to Bridgeport’s public schools. An estimated 40 percent of students who attend the city’s Catholic schools aren’t Catholic.

Dames said the White House invitation was extended to Bishop William E. Lori, once an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.

The bishop could not attend, and Dames went in his place.

Lori said the invitation was issued to the Bridgeport diocese because of his earlier role in Washington, and because his is the only diocese in the nation participating in the after-school tutoring component of the federal No Child Left Behind Law. The law filters money to the diocese and other groups that provide tutoring to public school students.

Lori said he has had discussions with Spellings about the initiatives Dames has brought to the district.

“Margaret has been a real dynamo. I always refer to her as the ubiquitous person,” Lori said.

Among the initiatives is curriculum “mapping,” which enables all schools to teach the same subject matter at about the same time.

The district is also moving to strengthen its teaching force, use of technology, fundraising and ability to get the word out about their programs and successes.

“We’re faith-based and proud of it, but we’re also second to none in academics,” Dames said.

The diocesan school district has highway billboards proclaiming as much.

Dames was nervous when she entered the White House, but was put at ease while sitting in the Roosevelt Room by Anita McBride, a Bridgeport native and graduate of Notre Dame High School in Fairfield, who is first lady Laura Bush’s chief of staff. Also, there were representatives from Catholic schools in Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and Chicago.

The president came to the gathering and asked the school officials for advice. “He said, ‘Catholic schools are very important and I want them to survive and I want them to thrive. You are the educators. Tell me how to keep our schools open,’ ” Dames said.

He went around the room asking for suggestions. When he got to Dames, she told him about the district’s curriculum and how instead of closing schools, the diocese has recently opened two and expanded two.

Dames said steps taken among schools in the Cathedral Cluster will be rolled out to all schools in the diocese. “Bridgeport is our model,” she said.

In Bridgeport, since the curriculum is aligned so that every school covers the same material about the same time, parents know each September what their children will be learning and when. The map follows the state standards for public schools, which Dames called good.

Dames attended Catholic schools as a child during the 1950s. She started her teaching career, however, in New York City public schools. She worked as superintendent of the Cornwall Central School District in Orange County, N.Y., before coming to the diocese.

She said she wouldn’t mind if her students took the Connecticut Mastery Test, but the state test is restricted to public schools. So diocesan students take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills instead. Scores from that test are used to measure how well they are doing.

With the new curriculum came grade-level meetings between all first-grade teachers, second-grade teachers and so on. Next, inter-grade meetings are planned so that all teachers will know what is covered in other grades.

“Children fall behind because there are gaps in their education. If we get teachers talking across grades, we can eliminate most of those gaps,” Vosberg said.

Sister Veronica Beato, the principal at St. Raphael School, had praise for Dames’ leadership.

“She’s introduced some great ideas,” Beato said.

At St. Peter School, Principal Sue Zello said second-graders walk to class with laptops provided by the school under their arms. It also has a kindergarten class where the new approach to reading includes vocabulary words taped to the wall, and literary circles where students discuss books they are reading.

Sister Araceli Fernandez, a teacher at the school since 1973, said change can sometimes be hard.

“But, you know, it’s really the same thing, different terminology. We’re teaching them to read,” she said.

Even before Dames was named the diocesan superintendent, salaries of parochial school teachers were on the rise. She has continued the practice, giving 6 percent raises annually. The average diocesan teacher salary is $39,800, according to school officials. The average salary in Bridgeport is closer to $48,000.

New teachers hired must be certified. In the past they didn’t need to be.

Efforts are under way to fill the school libraries, bring new grants into the school district to fill the gap between the $4,500 it costs to educate each child and the $3,000 it charges in tuition. The district also wants to start an endowment fund to help parents with tuition.

“We want parents to have a choice,” Dames said, who has an hour-long commute each morning from her home in Cornwall on the Hudson, west of Danbury, in New York. Her husband, Tom, is a college professor. They are the parents of three grown children. One lives in Cromwell and has an open-door policy for her mother on nights when she’s too tired to drive home.

During her visit to the White House, Dames said she was most impressed with the president’s manner. “He talked to you like you were the only one he was ever thinking of,” she said.

Bush spent an hour talking to the group, invited them to stay while he conducted a news conference, took pictures with them in the Oval Office, then let them watch as he flew off to Camp David in a helicopter.

Dames said she is aware of Bush’s low standing in public opinion polls, but called him tremendous with people one on one. “He seemed to be a man who really cared and let you know that,” she said.

She left convinced Bush would try to make it possible for a voucher program, similar to one in place in Washington, D.C., to be implemented in the Bridgeport diocese. Under vouchers, parents are given public money they can use for tuition at a private school. Many public school advocates oppose vouchers, contending they drain resources and undermine public schools.

“Never say never,” Dames said.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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