By Jean McDermott

Pacelli interim president and elementary principal

Last fall, the trustees of Pacelli Catholic Schools approved a strategic plan for our school. The groundwork for this plan was laid in the spring of 2015 when the Pacelli Visioning Task Force met to create a vision – a preferred future state – of the Pacelli Catholic School system for the next five years and beyond.

The task force was comprised of 22 members of the Austin community, representing a wide range of educational and employment backgrounds, including public and parochial educators and school administrators employed in Austin.

The efforts of the task force focused on four areas: enrollment and retention, academics and curriculum, governance and administration, and Catholic identity.

While developing goals and objectives for the school in these areas, the task force also decided to make a very important recommendation to the trustees, namely that Pacelli should embrace the classical Catholic education model.

The goal of adopting this education model was to raise the already high standards set for our students by emphasizing higher-order thinking skills such as application, analysis, synthesis, and creation, encouraging deeper learning and true understanding and not just rote memorization.

Although the purpose of the task force was not to create a strategic plan for the school, the process they followed and the product they created certainly resembled such a plan. The school’s trustees, school board, administration, and staff began working to achieve the goals outlined by the task force, and considerable progress was made, but the plan itself was not comprehensive.

Three critical areas were excluded: facilities, development and financial sustainability, and marketing. At the direction of the trustees, the Pacelli School Board picked up where the task force left off, and by the fall of 2016, had created a comprehensive strategic plan by adding these areas and re-working the task force’s final report so that it was more clearly in the format of a strategic plan.

Considerable progress has been made toward achieving the goals outlined in the strategic plan. We have increased course offerings in classical Catholic subject areas – philosophy, theology, and Latin – as these subject areas provide unique opportunities to students to engage in the development of higher-order thinking skills.

We also continue to implement a curriculum review process, ACE, which was developed in part by the University of Notre Dame. Pacelli always has had an excellent vocal music program, but now we have partnered with the McPhail Center for Music to offer band and orchestra to our students as well.

We also continue to strengthen our partnership with Riverland Community College, increasing opportunities for students to take Advanced Placement and Post Secondary Enrollment Options classes at Riverland but also increasing the number of our teachers qualified to teach PSEO classes at Pacelli. To retain our highly qualified and committed teachers, we have revised their salary schedule to compensate them more fairly and encourage their continued education.

But there is so much more to come. We will continue to develop and implement the classical Catholic model, adding course offerings including “transdisciplinary” courses within our high school.

Although we already have installed a secured entry system, we will continue to explore ways to ensure our campus safely accommodates a growing student population, including re-visiting options for creating a single Pacelli campus. And with the recent hiring of an Advancement Director, we will be working diligently on building an endowment that will sustain Pacelli in the future and help ensure the affordability of a Pacelli education for all.

If you are interested in learning more about Pacelli Catholic Schools visit our website at www.pacellischools.org, email admin@pacellischools.org or call 507-437-3278.