The Fremen Principle

When we have alternatives, we compromise...
instead of commit!

One of my favorite commentators is Seth Godin. He recently had an extremely timely post. What alternatives do we have as educators for our marginalized children? There are so many excuses...no Chromebooks, no internet access, parents forced to work in this crisis, tuition...et cetera, et cetera.

Are we to abandon ship? Have we abandoned our own children, of course not!

Bishop Pilla, retired Bishop of Cleveland, when dedicating our first wing of our new school building at Saint Martin told the audience pointing to our students, "These are all of our children!" Now, more than ever, those words ring so true. Bishop Gries has asked to be our chaplain for our new grade school project.

Last week I sent an email to 91 people with whom I have talked about this venture. I asked if they didn't want to get these updates, just send me an email. No one asked to be removed from the list! In fact, I got several very positive responses, many thoughtful questions, and even a donation!

Push for re-enrollment, new enrollment, hiring, and the final push to $3,000,000 goal!

You may see a masked man (me!) driving around eastside neighborhoods this week planting lawn signs promoting admissions at these schools! Re-enrollment at both these schools is hovering around 90% right now which is a tremendous sign in the faith parents have in Catholic schools.  New websites:  St. Thomas Aquinas Grade School  and  Archbishop Lyke Grade School.

Our Assistant Superintendent, Christian Dallavis, is working with School Choice Ohio obtaining emails, phone numbers, and addresses of families in the areas around our two schools. A blitz will occur shortly. The New York office has built a back end platform to gather the data. He is also spearheading the effort to hire a new principal at St. Thomas Aquinas. If you know of anyone who might be interested or know people who might be interested please let me know ASAP.

We are 80% of our goal of $3M. A few foundations have really stepped up to help us. We have received a few very large personal gifts as well. Most of these gifts come from national foundations and out of towners who have a great belief in our mission. My hope is that Cleveland will step up to finish this drive. These gifts can be over two years, but, of course, the first year is going to be the costliest! If you want to discuss a gift with me, please call 216-409-7018 or email at richardfclark@gmail.com. All gifts are tax-deductible. Stock and wire transfers can be accepted. Checks payable to Partnership Schools with CLEVELAND in the memo section.

We are also enlisting Ambassadors consisting of parents whose children are presently enrolled to contact people they may know with grade school-aged children. The process for admissions has been greatly simplified. One click on the website and some basic information will generate a phone call within 48 hours (most often much sooner).

What will school look like in the fall?

Isn't that the million-dollar question for much of our life?  Some schools and networks are feverishly developing plans for next year while putting online learning in place right now.  You know the old saw about fixing the plane while flying...well that is what is going on!

Partnership Schools hit the ground running.  I have included four links here.  The first one is our philosophy for dealing with this now and then three examples in different learning areas.  The key to all of this is building on the loving and caring relationships already established when school was in session before the pandemic.  Jean Baptiste De la Salle would tell his young teachers, "First win the heart, then win the brain!" Without those relationships, a school will be starting with a big disadvantage.

See this video in Math at a Distance

3 Lessons Learned

Spotlight on teaching phonics remotely  

Content Rich Curriculum

Math at a Distance

This is what is happening right now!  The Partnership staff is working on keeping this going as long as needed and then working in brick and mortar instruction when it is allowed.

Remember CMSD (different problems for sure) is still in the "task force" mode and a recent article from LA talked about 30,000 (25%) students who have not checked in online at all!  The blessing of the expansion of the Partnership model and expertise to Cleveland NOW is more and more apparent each day.

Here is a link to a podcast about shifting paradigms.  If only Partnership was in charge of the cavalry in WWI! Cautionary Tales. (Be brave, click on the link and it will all happen!).

Finally, a reflection on today's Gospel reading...a universal truth is revealed!

This is from one of my favorite theologians, Dominic Crossan, reflecting on the story of Jesus meeting up with two people walking to Emmaus:

A first clue that Luke 24:13-33 was meant as a parable and not history is that when Jesus joins the couple on the road, they do not recognize him. He is, as it were, traveling incognito. A second one is that even when he explains in detail how the biblical scriptures pointed to Jesus as the Messiah, they still do not recognize him. But the third and definitive clue to the story’s purpose is in the climax and it demands full quotation:

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (24:28-32)

That is parable, not history. The Christian liturgy involves Scripture and Eucharist—but they are not equal. The Scripture—even interpreted by Jesus himself—will do no more than create “burning hearts,” that is, hearts ready but to do what? The Eucharist invites the stranger in to share one’s meal and find that the stranger is Jesus. You will notice that the key verbs, “took, blessed, broke, gave,” in the Emmaus story’s climax were also used in the Last Supper’s Passover meal before Jesus’ execution (Mark 14:22)

So the universal truth is: invite the stranger to your table to share food and you will meet the divine!

Creativity and vision begin to emerge!

A new beginning

As we approach the 20-21 school year it would be easy to give in to fear and trepidation.  Vision and mission must take over!  A vision of a renewed even better Catholic school model and a mission to join with the marginalized families in partnership so that young people can learn and blossom!  As Partnership Schools NY comes to Cleveland we welcome their successful programs, curriculum, teacher prep, leadership training and just adding to the already loving Catholic school community here in Cleveland.  Christian Dallavis is the assistant superintendent for Partnership Schools has been working directly with the staffs and faculties of St. Thomas Aquinas and Archbishop Lyke elementary schools brings a deep sense of faith and hope!

"Talk without action is a speech."--T. Boone Pickens

A recent headline in our dying newspaper, The Plain Dealer,  "Cleveland schools still stuck in planning stages for ungraded online "enrichment," during coronavirus closure," was frightening.  35,000 students have had nothing from Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) save a few "packets" for learning.  This headline was from April 8!  Still nothing, eleven days later!  

I was told once by a young faculty member that I used too many war analogies.  I recently read (I forget where, another age issue, that people over 60 are entitled to use WWII stories and quotes.  Colin Powell is a general, but a bit younger.  I apply that permission to that quote as well!  In this article, "School Choice, Adaptability, and Sainthood:  Lessons from Cleveland," the story is very different!

This is, as my high school geometry teacher, Mr. Serpe, would point out, "the beauty part!"  Catholic schools are nimble and driven by a mission that includes the whole child.  Even if that means reading stories on Youtube or challenging the young students to read a "hard" book.  Bishop Roger Gries even said a Facebook Live Mass for the young school children and their families.  That same young faculty member mentioned above shared a picture recently through Instagram which showed the sidewalk in front of her house where Francie's (her young daughter) pre-k teacher snuck over to leave a sweet message and Francie was DElighted!  It read as follows:

Francie,

We like to call you  lastname

Always full of pep (rhymes with lastname)

Athletic, friendly, opposite of mean

Friendliest girl I've ever seen

Mrs. Teachername with a picture of a heart!

As Jean Baptiste De la Salle said:  "You (the teacher) can perform miracles by touching the hearts of those entrusted to your care."

Meanwhile CMSD has so many moving parts, it is still planning.  I am sure that the pre-k teachers at CMSD would love to do this and feel the same way, however all the issues involved most likely prevent this kind of contact. 

The Road to $3,000,000

As part of our agreement with the Cleveland Diocese and the Board of Partnership Schools NY is that we will secure in cash and pledges $3,000,000 by June 1, 2020.  These gifts are for the first two years of operation in Cleveland,  of that we need to have $2,000,000 frontloaded over the first year (which includes two calendar years thank God).  We have been working for two years to garner that kind of support from both local and national donors.  Believe it or not, we have a pathway to this goal.  Two national foundations are considering large gifts, a local foundation is considering a large gifts, and this past week two individual donors committed to $350,000!  We should have a good sense of the foundation gifts by mid-May.  We will be left with possibly raising as much as $600,000 to complete the goal.

This past week a daily reading held the story of the apostles who had fished all night and come up empty.  Jesus came along and told them to go out again and this time cast their net on the right side of the boat.  I can only imagine what the apostles were thinking.  Hey, who the heck do you think you are...we are the fishermen...what do you know?  But they went out anyway, probably muttering under their breath.  Remember they had been fishing all night!  Lo and behold, they caught so many fish (153 to be exact) they could hardly lift the net into the boat.  What I love the most about this story is at the end, as the apostles rowed the last 100 yards they found breakfast waiting for them--fish cooking over a charcoal fire, and some bread...cooked by Jesus!

Another quote from Jean Baptiste De la Salle"  "Often remind yourself that God is with you."

Now more than ever!

My whole life I have been involved in education.  For the last 20 years, I have been working with communities that have been marginalized.  Saint Martin de Porres High School, Cleveland's Cristo Rey School, came from a vision energized by God and a community of early adopters.  The first national meeting occurred in Chicago in a basement of a retreat center with 25 or so people.

When I came back from Chicago to Cleveland, I began talking about this new model of education.  People honestly thought I was losing it.  I was the principal of Saint Ignatius High School and worked with a  great leader, Fr. Bob Welsh, S.J.  Life was good.  What was I thinking?  I really wasn't thinking, I was acting on believing!  

As my wife taught me, God is always calling, it's just that we aren't always listening.  I listened then and quit my job and worked like there was no tomorrow for the next 15 years.  My role was actually to spread the Good News that God is calling us to change the world!!

Now, in the midst of the worst crisis this country has seen in my memory, I am called to yet another "impossible dream."  The strong Catholic communities that built and supported Catholic schools and parishes across the United States have relocated!  The churches and schools did not.  They became a beacon for new communities sharing what could be argued as the best education system in the United States.  Resources became scarcer and scarcer until now we are on the verge of closing this great asset.

I am here to announce once again, "This is not what God wants!"  The Gospel could not be clearer or more direct.  I am working feverishly with Partnership Schools NYC to replicate in Cleveland.  Despite all odds, we have received the go-ahead from the Diocese.  It was one of, if not the last, act of Bishop Perez to sign the agreement on February 13, 2020.

We now have the go-ahead to begin to manage St. Thomas Aquinas School and Archbishop Lyke for the 2020-21 school year and to bring on at least 4 more schools in the next few years.

To say nothing of  "A woman with money is no match against a woman on a mission!"  But there is, of course, the other saying that comes into play, "No money, no mission."  I recall my mentor, Fr. Welsh, S.J., saying more than once, "If money is the only problem, then we are in good shape!"

Jeremiah 20:4 "You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed. All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me."

I certainly identified with this passage 20 years ago, and now, more than ever, I hear it reverberating in my heart.  We need to raise $3M by June 1.  Most people I talk with say that that would be impossible given the present situation.  My response is again from the Gospel, "And looking at them Jesus said to them, "With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."