Three Schools in Two Cities to Join the Partnership

Our Partnership community is growing!

This week, Toledo Bishop Daniel Thomas announced that two schools in the heart of the city—Rosary Cathedral and Queen of Apostles—will become Partnership Schools. Bishop Edward Malesic of Cleveland also announced that Holy Name Elementary will become that city’s fifth Partnership school.

We are thrilled for the opportunity to bring the ambition we have for children and Catholic education to these three striving communities at a crucial time. School choice policies are expanding—a crucial step toward educational equity for working-class families. At the same time, the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing American students is widening. Partnership Schools’ work places us right at this intersection of increasing opportunity and growing need.

The need for high-quality school options is particularly urgent in Toledo and Cleveland, where both cities have announced that many public schools will be closing at the end of this school year.

The Yass Prize Alumni Award is providing funding to kick-start the work of serving more students. The award inaugurates the Partnership’s National Expansion Fund, an effort to leverage local support and national philanthropy together on behalf of children in low-income communities and the Catholic elementary schools uniquely well-positioned to help them flourish—schools like Holy Name, Rosary Cathedral, and Queen of Apostles.

These three parochial schools have anchored their neighborhoods and propelled social mobility for generations. Holy Name has served Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood since 1864. For most of that time, it was run by the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. Queen of Apostles—the oldest continuously operating school in Toledo has served the city’s Old South End since 1876, and Rosary Cathedral—has served the Old West End since 1914. A vigorous local effort, the Center City Ministry of Toledo, has kept the schools open while so many others closed. The Center City Ministry will become Partnership Schools of Toledo in the months ahead.

These are schools where generations of families have seen their values reinforced and their dreams for their children set on a path toward fulfillment. We are both humbled and exhilarated to help new families find trajectory-altering education and strong communities in all seven schools we will now serve.

One Partnership Student’s Path to The Best High School in Cleveland

If you ask Partnership principals and network staff what the best high school in Cleveland is, you should get the same answer from each of us: It’s the school where each individual student best fits and can flourish fully. Luckily for our students, there are a wealth of “best” high schools in Cleveland. We’ve shared stories of students headed to some of those schools here, here, and here, for example. But when we saw how Zion Pinnock reacts when he speaks about the high school he’s headed to in the fall, we got more than another great example of what a fit-flourish high school placement looks like; we got a share in his excitement.

Currently an eighth grader at Archbishop Lyke, Zion is headed to the Hawken School, an independent day and boarding school. “They are really into engineering, and I love that there are no grades,” he beams. The Mastery School—Hawken’s newer campus in University Circle, where Zion will attend—uses a mastery approach, where students’ transcripts reflect skills and content they have mastered instead of traditional grades.

Other features of the school have him really excited: “They have two-week intensives where you are focused on one subject before a break, and that’s a great way to learn something. And I plan on joining the philosophy club, the photography club—I want to try a lot of new things.”

His grin gets even wider as he explains, “My mom is super-proud. She knows it’s a really good school, and she’s proud of me being able to get in.”

Zion relied on a number of partners to help with his path to Hawken. He’s an enthusiastic participant in after-school and summer enrichment programs run by Boys Hope, Girls Hope (soon to be re-christened Hope Ignites), and it was a private school fair sponsored by that organization where he first encountered Hawken. He met with the admissions office multiple times, and he got help on his application from a knowledgeable resource close to home: his older brother, who goes to the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine and wants to be a doctor. His brother also sparked his interest in robotics. “We used to build robotic kits together—including a robotic hand.” 

Zion also credits Archbishop Lyke—where he has attended since Kindergarten—with preparing him well for Hawken. He explains, “The curriculum here is harder–for example, we take Algebra 1–which a lot of people don’t take.” And he also feels that the friendliness of the teachers at Archbishop Lyke is similar to that he’s seen so far on visits to Hawken.

We are proud that most of our students go on to attend Catholic high schools. Yet as we work to increase opportunities for all our students to be ready to flourish in high school and beyond, we’re grateful that there are so many “best” high schools in Cleveland where Zion—and dozens of other students—can find the learning experiences they need to fulfill their family’s aspirations and find joy along the way. 

Five Lessons from 125 Years of Cleveland’s St. Thomas Aquinas School

This year, St. Thomas Aquinas School on Cleveland’s near east side celebrates its 125th anniversary. The vintage building contains classic elements that many Catholic school grads across the country would recognize: high ceilings, the scents of wood and floor polish, hard-working teachers and parents whose firm, warm instructions bounce off the tiled walls. Yet for all the timeless feel, the school’s history is dynamic—and it has powerful lessons to teach those of us who are fans of Cleveland, of urban communities, of Catholic schools, or of all three.

1. Catholic schools’ power to strengthen communities propelled their heyday.

St. Thomas Aquinas parish became the “Irish Cathedral” of Cleveland and helped accelerate the growth of the neighborhood around it. By 1950, it served over 2,000 families, and it spawned the founding of other parishes to meet the growing need. As Notre Dame’s Prof. John McGreevy notes in his study of the Catholic parishes’ impact on the development of American cities—Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North—Catholic congregations built more than churches; they erected schools and housing for religious orders to staff them, which “anchored Catholics to particular neighborhoods” in ways that other denominations did not.

Educational and social offerings as well as religious services ensured that immigrant families and their descendants had a place where they belonged in a new country not always welcoming to newcomers, particularly Catholic ones. Catholic schools in our own day can tap into this historic power by fostering belonging along with knowledge, skills, and faith. Current St. Thomas Principal Rachael Dengler, parents, and the school’s staff are doing just that: offering an expanding number of community activities, like their dad’s group.

In a culture that can be both individualistic and lonely, Catholic schools that act on our beliefs that we are made for each other—that are lives are fullest in community—can offer what few other types of schools can.

2. Catholic institutions played an often-overlooked role in the histories of cities and of striving African-American families.  

By the late 1940s, St. Thomas parishioners included not only European-American immigrants and their descendents but African-American families who were part of the Great Migration. The school integrated years before Brown v. Board made segregation unconstitutional, and prominent Black Clevelanders—like insurance company founder M.C. Clarke—joined the parish.

Yet a student can be enrolled without being truly welcomed. As Sr. Dorothy Ann Blatnica, VSC, notes in At the Altar of Their God: African American Catholics in Cleveland, 1922-1961, “The struggle of African American Catholics to become a vital part of the American Catholic Church is as old as the story of slavery in America itself.”  Her history of the city’s Black Catholics includes the challenges of families moving into St. Thomas Aquinas to be fully accepted in the school and parish community. M.C. Clarke, for example, was denied entry into the Knights of Columbus. Yet according to former associate pastor Fr. Edward Camille, St. Thomas’s Black families soon “assumed leadership in the parish and became involved in all aspects of parish organization. These same individuals support and foster each other’s personal lives as well.”

Fr. Camille also notes that even as racially driven fights among teenagers broke out in nearby Rockefeller Park, “the parish school became one of the most effective means for the children to become acquainted with those of other races.”

The ideals of our faith can equip Catholic schools to become instruments of building the beloved community, even as we grapple with the same social pressures that all schools experience.

3. American communities are constantly shifting—and our schools must shift too.

In Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900-1980, Georgia Tech Professor Todd Michney traces Black Clevelanders’ migrations up from the south, into zones of Cleveland artificially restricted by racist housing practices, and then out in stages to suburbs. Along the way, he recounts, Black families participated in a vibrant array of civic groups—from informal block clubs to more formal neighborhood associations—and leveraged the power of community relationships to solve problems and advance each others’ interests.

Yet while many longtime St. Thomas parishioners saw new neighbors as fellow churchgoers pursuing the same goals, others saw threats. Indeed, the parish saw a concentrated wave of “blockbusting”—the insidious real estate practice of spreading rumors of growing disorder and impending home sales nearby to get home owners of both races to sell fast and cheap, and then turning around to rent properties at an inflated rate to Black newcomers with limited options due to discriminatory housing practices. In fact, blockbusting in the St. Thomas parish community was so pronounced that Prof McGreevy uses it to exemplify the practice in Parish Boundaries.

St. Thomas pastor Fr. John A Clark, appointed in 1958, fought the practice hard—visiting thousands of living rooms to persuade parishioners to stay. Bishop Floyd Begin encouraged him and others, asserting that “It’s good Catholicism, good Americanism, and just good common sense to work together as good neighbors to make your community and city the best in the world.” But families of both races moved out, and from a high of 2,000 families in 1950, St. Thomas declined so rapidly that by 1975, the church was condemned, demolished, and not rebuilt.

It is intriguing to consider what the American urban landscape would look like today if efforts like Fr. Clark’s and and a core of St. Thomas families had succeeded in maintaining robust, economically and racially diverse parishes in the heart of cities across the country. As we celebrate the powerful community-building of parishes like St. Thomas in their early decades, we must also look to the vacant lot next to the school—where the church once stood—and hear a call coming from its past to build communities a little differently moving forward.

4. Resilience—and redemption—comes from broadening our communities.

Yet St. Thomas Aquinas School has outlasted even the parish that created it. That has happened in large part because St. Thomas persisted in doing what few other neighborhood institutions can: offering a sense of community, anchored in values and shared aspirations, just as it did in a bygone era. Jeff Allen, a dad active in the school’s dads’ group, comments that the school is “becoming a community center”—just as it was founded to be 125 years ago.

That community is welcoming of children of other denominations, and it is not alone. In 1970, just three percent of students in American Catholic schools were not Catholic; now, over twenty percent are non-Catholic. The universal Church has broadly appealing institutions right in neighborhoods that could use them the most, and a wide array of families are seeking them out.

The founder of Partnership Schools in Cleveland, Rich Clark, also brought to the school a wider community of supporters who want to see the neighborhood and the city’s tradition of working-class Catholic schools continue to thrive. And the network is expanding and strengthening ties with more of Cleveland’s exceptional high schools. This expansion of St. Thomas’s community provides what sociologists call both bonding and bridging social capital. Striving to be as energetically welcoming as we are unapologetically Catholic also helps us heed our Gospel call.

5. Public funding for school choice is essential—and insufficient.

In 2020—more than two decades after Cleveland and EdChoice Scholarships put Cleveland in the vanguard of the school choice movement—the announcement went out that St. Thomas Aquinas School was closing, only to be reversed just weeks later when the Diocese announced that the school would stay open and become a Partnership School. The school’s near-closure is a cautionary tale for the growing number of places across the country where parents are now able to access public funding for school choice.

Vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and education savings accounts all offer new possibilities for parents—and Catholic schools. But over thirty percent of Cleveland’s Catholic schools closed after scholarships became available. In part, that’s because the initial funding was insufficient—and still falls far below that of charter and public schools.

Yet schools also need more than state funding to serve students well. In addition to philanthropic investment, new forms of support are vital, particularly to serve students coming to us from other sectors, who may have learning gaps or school culture shifts to navigate. By finding creative ways to provide comprehensive supports like teacher coaching, curriculum guidance, and leadership development to schools like St. Thomas, we can answer one of the critiques of universal school choice: that it benefits the poor less than others. In the process, we can reinvigorate urban Catholic schools, the largest potential source of school choice seats in many low-income communities.

The Good of the Other

St. Thomas Aquinas–the school’s patron saint–defines love as “desiring the good of the other.” In the final analysis, it is love that has helped St. Thomas persevere. Generation after generation of community members have willed the good of other people’s children at the corner of Superior Avenue and East 91st Street. Jeff Allen, St. Thomas dad and volunteer, has said about the students: “They aren’t my kids—but they are all my kids.” If enough of us see the children of St. Clair-Superior and neighborhoods like it the same way Jeff does, then schools like St. Thomas can thrive well into their next century and more.

“At St. Francis, I feel like I can be myself”—A Mother and Daughter Reflect

We often say that Partnership Schools are more than classrooms; they are communities. Recently, one mother-daughter duo—mom Je’Nice and sixth grader Je’Shauna—shared what the St. Francis School community means to them. 

In a few powerful words, they explained:

Je'Nice–Mom and Volunteer Cheerleading Coach

My child excels here. She brightened up when she came back to St. Francis. 

I like it for the structure; children need structure. They pray. They learn how to be respect­able. Some places are institutionalized, but St. Francis is warm, because they get to know the children individually.

There is an open door. The teachers and principal welcome parent involvement. Ms. Hanna (who became principal this year) really brought warmth to the school. The communication we need is there.

I have high expectations, and  the school supports them. I want to make sure my daughter graduates from high school, and want her to have the choice to go to college. I want her to be able to afford things, and also to be humble—a giver who shares, cares, and doesn’t look down on others. 

It is worth driving my daughter here!

Je'Shauna–Sixth Grader

This is the best school. 

We are cherished. We learn hard things. There is a higher standard of learning here, and I like it being more challenging. Right now in math, we are factoring. Today, it got easy.

We make people feel welcome. If there is a problem, the adults take care of it. I am happy when I come to school. It’s mostly fun. 

At St. Francis, I feel like I can be myself. 

Fathers at St. Thomas Aquinas Are Helping Students Thrive—and Each Other

On any given school day this spring at St. Thomas Aquinas School on Cleveland’s east side, you can look down the hall and see something that may not be a common sight in other elementary schools: dads. 

“I love getting up every morning and coming here,” Ricardo Richmond explains. You’ll see him do for all sorts of students in the hall what he does for his twin daughters at home: give a high-five, help a student learn to tie a loose shoelace, or listen to a young person who is having a frustrating day. You’ll see Jeff Allen do the same many afternoons, along with a handful of other dads. Mr. Allen also has two daughters at the school, but they are not the only reasons why he is there. “Every kid here is mine through God,” he explains.

Helping all God’s children at St. Thomas Aquinas “down the right path” is the mission of these fathers. In late winter, they answered a call from the school’s dean, Tali Collins, for dads who might be willing to spend time at the school during the day—”not to be scary,” she explains, but “to walk the path of excellence with students.” The school, commonly referred to as “STA” by members of the community, calls the dad’s group “STAnd Together.” Mr. Richmond and Mr. Allen have stood together with the students almost every day since. 

As volunteers, they join in the work that another St. Thomas dad—Alex Afzal—does daily in his work as the school’s operations manager, who interacts with students and parents daily. “I think every school should have a stronger male presence,” Mr. Afzal says—and he acts on that belief by working at his children’s school. 

St. Thomas fathers with Academic Dean Tali Collins.

Middle schoolers King and Elijah explain what all three fathers do. “They check on you. They really care. They listen.” Elijah explains that a frustrating comment from a fellow student the day before “got my emotions a little out of control,” and King encouraged him to go talk with Mr. Richmond, who “made sure I was OK.” And just knowing they are cared for by men in the community who model concern for others has had an impact that King notices: “it’s quieter in the hallways”—and Elijah adds, “more peaceful.” 

Mr. Richmond and Mr. Allen make it clear that the nurture they are providing is far from what they experienced as children. “The streets raised me,” Mr. Richmond explains, “not parents or school.” Mr. Allen reflects frankly that his early years as a dad were not ones he’s proud of—which makes the second chance that he has to raise his stepdaughters and help their classmates all the more important to him. 

It is their imperfections as much as their skills that drive Mr. Allen and Mr. Richmond to show up as dads at the school every day. “I want my children to go where I am going, not where I have been,” Mr. Richmond says candidly.

“I am in the healing process,” Mr. Allen adds. “And that’s where our power comes from.” He also shares that spending time with other dads at St. Thomas has helped him develop a few new approaches. “I’ve learned from Richmond here,” he says with a grin; “he’s good at calming kids down.” 

Having parents roaming the halls might create challenges to school culture, rather than reinforcing it. But Dean Tali Collins was clear with the dads about the value they bring, and the dads have embraced the spirit of collaboration that inspired her to reach out in the first place. “We can’t overshadow the teachers,” Mr. Allen explains. “We’ve got a lot of humility in our walk here.”

Having your dad in the hallway might also be unwelcome for some children, and Mr. Richmond’s daughter Amanda admits that at first, “I was embarrassed” to have him at school so often. But now she and her sister Chloe—along with Mr. Allen’s stepdaughters Releesha and Theresa—agree that it “feels good” to watch their dads help others.

Mr. Richmond, the hard-working single father of twin girls, does not hesitate to explain that “God blessed me” with his children, “and being able to sacrifice for other people’s children in the school while mine are watching” is an added blessing. All three hope similar models of father involvement can spread to other schools.

It is the true spirit of partnership—of parents, educators, and supporters coming together to give children what none of them alone can provide—that gives our schools their power. While that collaboration may look different from school to school—and from decades past at Catholic schools—it is as valuable now at each Partnership school as it was decades ago, when they were first founded by and for the communities they continue to serve. And at St. Thomas Aquinas this spring, it is fathers who are making the community stronger. 

“So Clutch”: Two Cleveland Educators on Partnership Professional Development

Nobody in Major League Baseball hit more home runs in 2022 than the Yankees’ Aaron Judge. Jose Ramirez of the Cleveland Guardians is pretty amazing too. It’s safe to say that Aaron Judge and Jose Ramirez both know how to hit a baseball. 

Still, they both have hitting coaches. More than one, in fact. 

Like Judge and Ramirez, Cleveland’s own Rhonda Rutkowski is not in her rookie season. The middle school English-Language Arts at Archbishop Lyke is a veteran educator. But in the last three years—since Archbishop Lyke joined the Partnership Schools—she’s been getting more professional development than ever before in her career. “And what we’re learning in trainings, we’re doing in class. Not just because Nancy Lynch and Aaron Dukes [the principal and assistant superintendent] will be coming in looking for it, but because it works.”

Archbishop Lyke Middle School ELA teacher Rhona Rutkowski in action.

Professional development and teacher coaching haven’t always been a feature of Catholic education; day after day, teachers have largely been left on their own to figure out what helps students learn. Yet they are at the center of how Partnership Schools operates. 

To drive the kind of growth we know our students can achieve, we provide even seasoned educators frequent opportunities to study best practices, rehearse them with their peers, and  implement them with the support of principals who share a common understanding of what great instruction looks like.

“If we want students to get more out of class, we’ve got to put more in—and we do that by giving teachers the sustained support they need to teach worthwhile material well, every day, to every child,” explains Aaron Dukes, Partnership assistant superintendent.

Joe Manning, a supporter of Partnership Schools in Cleveland and a teacher-turned-lawyer, observed some of the training early this fall and shared a perspective unique to someone who has experienced teaching and another profession. “Teachers can easily feel ‘under-respected’—after all, which “real” professionals have no business card, no office, no phone line, no secretary/assistant, no title?  Arranging a first-class workshop goes a long way toward reminding the teachers that they are professionals with a highly significant mission!”

John Carroll University hosted Partnership Schools’ fall kick-off PD.

Joe added that he observed “a sense of common purpose and unity” emerging among teachers from the four schools. “It takes a lot of planning AND intentionality” to achieve that in days of training. 

Just after the Christmas holidays, all the Partnership teachers in Cleveland were back together for more training. Rhonda and her colleagues focused on what might seem as elemental as swinging a bat: giving clear instructions. 

“If you’re given a tool but don’t know how to use it, it’s no good.”

 

As St. Thomas Aquinas first-grade teacher Shannon Altenbach explains, giving clear instructions takes a lot more planning than it may seem. She started teaching for the first time in January of 2021—the middle of the first full pandemic school year. “I was handed the scripted reading curriculum, and I thought I could just read it out of the teacher’s guide; I quickly learned that doesn’t work.

“If you’re given a tool but don’t know how to use it, it’s no good. That’s what we’re learning in these professional developments: How to plan. Now, I go through the lesson, sometimes with my principal, and we plan what the focus should be. I plan when I want to cold-call, when I need to check for understanding—those are all steps the training has helped me understand are particularly valuable to do.”

Every lesson in the Partnership moves toward independent practice—a moment when students try a new skill or apply new knowledge on their own—and both Rhonda and Shannon agreed that a lesson is most likely to go awry in that independent practice time. ”When I answer one student’s question, the rest can become disengaged,” Rhonda notes. And it’s not just a matter of behavior management to keep all the students thinking and working independently. 

“That’s why the PD is so clutch,” Shannon explains. “The planning of the lesson up to that point determines whether the students can try things on their own.”

Assistant Superintendent Aaron Dukes leads PD this fall.

Both Rhonda and Shannon appreciated the January professional development’s focus on another simple step: having the aim of the lesson visible to all the students on the board. Rhonda finds it helps focus her students; Shannon notes that “my first graders are just starting to read, so they may not be able to read it yet, but it helps me focus.”

And while they don’t deal with the kind of challenges to focus that a major league batter does—a spinning fastball approaching at over 90 mph while a crowd of tens of thousands roars—they do have lots of factors to take in as they teach. “In a reading skills lesson with nineteen first graders, there might be blending practice, tricky words, letter teams, a word story—and there might also be a child who’s having a bad day and one who needs to go to the bathroom. It can be hard to budget time, so the aim on the board helps make sure I stay focused on the main thing to learn that day,” Shannon notes.

Rhonda adds that the kind of continual improvement she experiences as a result of her investment in the professional development and coaching she receives is one reason why she still enjoys teaching after many years. 

We have more than student achievement to gain from investing in teachers’ professional growth. While teachers may not get the kind of adulation or compensation professional athletes get, if they share the same “rage to master” their craft that drives even experts like hall-of-fame bound athletes to keep learning—and they get the support they need to continually grow that mastery—then they may be more inclined to persist as teachers, at a time when our nation needs good educators more than ever.