Teacher Support: The Resources We Need to Attract & Retain Top Talent
Fundraising Target: $500,000
One of the most important differences between our current moment and the environment for Catholic schools eighty — or even fifty — years ago, is the ability of a typical Archdiocese to subsidize the cost of local Catholic education.
Most of us who grew up in Catholic schools can remember what our grade schools or high schools were like, where nuns and occasionally brothers and priests were regularly seen in the hallways, in the school offices, or in the classrooms. Such a robust pool of available talent left a typical Catholic school with a relatively small payroll, and relatively few bills to pay, mostly for practical costs like heating and lighting.
For reasons we all know too well, those days are largely over. Discounts for families still exist, but the labor pool of clergy certainly doesn't. That transition has an upside in that our teachers have probably never been more thoroughly trained in method and pedagogy.
The down side, of course, is cost. Top quality lay teachers now fill the void left by a diminishing population of nuns and priests. But with loans to pay and families to support, these teachers can’t afford to work for the small wages that typical Parishes were accustomed to paying even twenty years ago.
Granted, there is nothing like a Catholic school — especially St. Francis — when it comes to providing a teacher with rewarding teaching experience. That said, today’s teachers need more than a great culture and a supportive community to make ends meet.
For these and other reasons, one of the features of the Future School Fund is a Teacher Endowment. The Teacher Endowment will allow SFA to provide our faculty with benefits that are current only available to competing public schools — help for continuing education, for example, or maternity leave.
This $500,000 Endowment will allow SFA to provide such benefits on an ongoing basis, using annual proceeds to cover program costs.