CLIFTON Principals and staff of Catholic elementary and high schools in the Diocese learned strategies to increase their student enrollments — while also helping to grow the Church in the U.S. — by improving their recruitment of Latino families in a process that starts with building relationships with them in their schools, parishes and communities.
Representatives from schools in the Diocese gathered on Sept. 26 in the Pope John Paul II Center here to listen to speakers of the Latino Enrollment Institute (LEI) at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana talk about ways to market to Latinos which they described as a drastically under-served community in the Church given its large population. For the all-day event, the diocesan Schools Office invited the speakers, who talked about the reality of the future of the Church, how to make their schools more culturally responsive to Latino families, how to fill seats in their classrooms, marketing to the Latino community and persuading their staffs, parents and pastors to “buy in” to their recruitment plans. The event also included a session for pastors.
“Without our Catholic schools, our Church will not have a bright future. Catholic schools hold the record for making missionary disciples by far. It’s also impossible to look at our Catholic schools and their future without looking at them through the lens of Latinos and Catholic schools. If a diocese looks at the future of Catholic schools, at any level, and does not think about Latinos, they are missing the boat,” said Holy Cross Father Joe Corpora, director of university partnerships of the Alliance for Catholic Education at Notre Dame, which established the LEI. “I’m impressed that you are taking a very solid and critical look at your Catholic schools,” the priest told representatives of local schools.
In his talk, Father Corpora supported his hope for the future of Catholic education by citing promising statistics from the Center for the Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). In one study, CARA found that 75 percent of Catholic school students and 65 percent of public school students attended Mass in 1960, compared with 27 percent from Catholic school and only 2 percent from public school in 2013. He said that recent percentages show a sharp overall drop in Mass attendance but also show much stronger numbers for Catholic school students. Father Corpora also credited his years in Catholic elementary school for inspiring him to pursue the priesthood.
As part of the changing dynamic, “the immigration of Latinos in the United States has completely changed the face of the United States and especially in the Church. They have accounted for 65 percent of the growth in the Church since 1965,” Father Corpora said.
“Do we see the presence of Latinos as a sociological phenomenon or as Divine Providence? I see it as Divine Providence — as God renewing the Church in the U.S. with and through Latinos,” Father Corpora said. “I invite us to understand Latinos from a position of strength, not a position of deficit. Maybe you already do this. If not, it makes a big difference how we go about our work. We understand our work in the words of Pope Francis when he talks about creating a ‘culture of encounter,’ where I have something good to give to you and you have something good to give to me,” he said.
To cultivate the “culture of encounter,” schools need to learn how to become more culturally responsive to Latino families, said Manuel Fernandez, LEI program director. LEI identifies and helps Catholic schools with a significant number of open classroom seats, a large number of Latino families in the surrounding area and motivated principals by “offering a framework to transform schools in order to attract and serve Latino families,” according to LEI’s website at https://ace.nd.edu/catholic-school-advantage/latino-enrollment-institute.
“First, Catholic schools are evangelizers. We are in the business of making saints,” Fernandez said. “At its heart, we are to build and sustain relationships, which matter most to Latinos. We need to make them feel at home and part of the family,” he said.
Fernandez suggested that schools could accomplish this goal by incorporating into their buildings the imagery and colors of many of the Latino cultures and religious devotions, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe for Mexicans, and printing their documents and signs in both English and Spanish. Also, schools need to find out the demographics of their specific areas. For example, 57 percent of the population in Paterson is Latino with Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Peruvians as the largest ethnicities. So schools need to become students of their families’ cultures, which have differences in language, food, music, customs and religious devotions that enliven the Church, Fernandez said.
In addition, schools — especially those that are struggling financially — should be courting local businesses for their support. Also, schools can offer a “flexible” tuition model that enables better-off families to pay full tuition, while “giving a break,” to those who cannot. The model, however, might run into opposition from pastors, who will not allow schools to negotiate tuition; business managers, who will “want to know where the lost income will come from”; and parents, who will say, “It’s not fair,” Jeannie Courchene, LEI’s principal mentor, told the local schools staffs.
“First, Catholic schools are a mission of the Church. We should see them as a part of the catechetical ministry of the Church. We form children to be disciples of Christ for life,” said Courchene, who also spoke about previously having led the revitalization of St. Rose of Lima School in Denver. “Catholic schools serve the people the Holy Spirit sends us. Many of them are Latinos,” she said.
Later in the day, Fernandez returned to speak about how schools can market to their Latino communities, telling people that Catholic education is “available, affordable and possible.” This starts with building relationships in the parish and school — with the existing families, the religious education program, Hispanic ministries and other groups — and then moving out into the community. Schools need to enlist its active parents to become recruiters in the community and mentor new families. Staffers need to attend or speak at Spanish-language Masses, other parish functions and events in the community, including festivals and soccer games, he said.
The diocesan Schools Office invited LEI representatives for a visit to give last week’s presentation in response to “seeing increases in Latino populations in our schools and looking at research that shows the Latino population to be underrepresented in the Church ” said Mary Baier, diocesan schools superintendent.
“During the program, we learned how to do more in recruiting Latino families to our schools. We received insight to this specific population, for instance, that we have to be relational and make the students and families feel supported,” Baier said. “It was very well received by the schools and the pastors,” she said.