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Youngstown Diocese schools take new approach involving laypeople
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
Schools in the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown are converting to a two-tiered governance structure aimed at sustaining the schools and offering lay-people more opportunity to be involved.
The two-tiered governance system has been operational at John F. Kennedy in Warren for the last several years and at Ursu- line for about a year, but it’s being established in other diocese schools in the Mahoning Valley.
“To meet the challenges facing Catholic schools we have to work more closely together and we have to engage the laity in the leadership of our schools,” said Nick Wolsonovich, superintendent of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, Office of Catholic Schools.
Under the two-tiered governance structure, the bishop appoints a member board whose responsibilities include legal issues, finances, property mission, hiring a president and selecting a board of directors.
The president then hires the school principals.
Cardinal Mooney, St. Joseph the Provider and Ursuline, as well as diocese schools outside the Valley, are considered their own system with one president and one principal each.
JFK, which includes an elementary and junior/senior high schools, has a president and a principal for each school.
The Mahoning Valley Regional Catholic School System, which includes St. Christine, St. Joseph/Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Charles, Holy Family, St. Nicholas and St. Patrick in Hubbard, has one president with a principal for each individual school.
Each system is its own legal entity and no longer tied to a particular parish.
Presidents are charged with institutional advancement for the systems while principals are each school’s educational leader.
“The president is the CEO and the principal is the COO,” Wolsonovich said.
Wolsonovich, who served in the 1980s as principal at Ursuline, said that in that role, he’d have to determine almost hourly whether to focus on educational issues or other issues such as building or funding problems.
“This eliminates that,” he said.
The Rev. Richard Murphy, president of Ursuline, gives the system high marks in its first year.
“I think we’ve had a pretty good year,” he said. “I think it’s been really successful.”
Father Murphy served as president of the Warren schools and also was Ursuline’s chaplain many years before that.
“We were able to hit the ground running,” he said. “We have 15 great board members who really support education and Ursuline in particular.”
Wolsonovich, who worked for dioceses in Chicago and Florida before returning to the city, called the change “an investment in the future.”
Both the member boards and boards of directors are voluntary. Presidents report to both.
Wolsonovich credits the new system at Ursuline for a recent $500,000 gift.
Father Murphy said he was introduced by one of the board members to someone who had never been a donor to the school before. After Father Murphy informed the individual more about the school, that person made the contribution. That money will be used to augment the school endowment scholarships, providing financial aid to needy students and their families, he said.
“When you’re a small school — we have just over 400 students — that means a lot,” Father Murphy said. “Sixty percent of our student body receives financial aid.”
Brian Sinchak has been president of JFK for five years and previously worked in the Cleveland Diocese, where the two-tiered system is in most schools.
He believes it’s a system that works because the president can focus on business matters while the principal focuses on education.
Sinchak pointed to JFK’s surpassing its fundraising goal by 200 percent, increasing enrollment and standardized test scores that place the school in the top 5 percent of all Ohio schools as examples that the system works.
Although the diocese is paying more personnel — a president and secretary for each system — Wolsonovich believes the time devoted to institutional advancement, including fundraising, will more than make up for it.
“If we do it right, the institution will be stronger,” he said.