Giving direction to New Orleans Catholic education

Archbishop Gregory Aymond draws no links between leadership shake-ups at Catholic schools

Published: Sunday, July 31, 2011, 6:30 AM

By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune The Times-Picayune
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These are extraordinary days for Catholic education in metropolitan New Orleans, where schools are preparing to open the 2011-12 academic year after a series of remarkable leadership shake-ups more common to the corporate world than the usually placid universe of Catholic education.

And although Archbishop Gregory Aymond is a major factor in each episode, it would be wrong to draw too much from that, he said in a brief interview.
At De La Salle High School, at Archbishop Rummel High School, at St. Augustine High School, even at his own Office of Catholic Schools, the nerve center for the 69-school parochial system — in each, the requested resignations of presidents, principals and superintendents is a special case that has its own unique set of reasons, Aymond said.
Do not look for a common denominator that sheds light on him or his way of exercising authority as the ultimate manager of Catholic education, Aymond said.
That said, Aymond declined to elaborate on the extraordinary rash of forced leadership changes at usually stable Catholic schools, which serve thousands of families across the New Orleans metropolitan area.
Aymond said he played different roles in each. And he said there are no unifying themes other than the obvious diagnosis that in each case, performance needed to be improved.
Moreover, he said, each involved the performance of key individuals, and he would not discuss personnel matters.
With only three weeks or so before the beginning of the new school year a survey shows:

• In the Office of Catholic Schools, Jan Daniel Lancaster prepares to take over as new superintendent of 69 parochial schools educating 28,000 elementary and high school students. She is Aymond’s choice after he asked for the resignation of her predecessor, Sister Kathleen Finnerty, and two other key educators as well;
• At St. Augustine High School, local directors are locked in litigation with the Josephite priests who founded the school over issues of local control — a dispute precipitated when Aymond approached the Josephites to express his concerns over corporal punishment at the school.
• At Rummel High School, an archdiocesan school under Aymond’s complete control, the academic year begins without permanent leadership because earlier this month the president and principal resigned simultaneously, to the public relief of the president of the school’s alumni association, who expressed his gratitude for Aymond’s support.
• At De La Salle High School, administered by the Christian Brothers, leadership is similarly unsettled, with neither permanent president nor principal in place. There, Aymond, with other school executives, earlier this month participated in a closed-door meeting with President Kenneth Tedesco shortly before Tedesco offered his resignation at the board meeting that followed.

The changes come a few weeks shy of Aymond’s second anniversary in New Orleans.
Aymond is an educator by training. For years he ran Notre Dame Seminary, a graduate-level institution.
Yet his nine years as bishop and chief Catholic educator in Austin, Texas, did not mark him out as an activist especially inclined to shake up the status quo.
But Catholic education in New Orleans is also under unusual stress.
Population losses and the economic aftershocks of Hurricane Katrina, along with national economic changes, have bled the system of 19 percent of its pre-Katrina enrollment.
And particularly in New Orleans, the rise of the charter school movement, while uneven in its successes, has produced a more competitive educational environment, requiring Catholic classrooms to make more compelling cases for the tuition premiums parents are asked to pay.