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04/03/2018 12:00 AMTwo months after the first parent meeting at which members of the Our Lady of Mercy (OLM) school community were still grappling with the shocking news that the school will close at the end of the academic year, OLMStrong committee leaders are nearly ready to put concrete options on the table to keep the school operational on the shoreline. At a second parent meeting on March 28 in Guilford, committee leaders unveiled building options, curriculum and business plans, and challenges still to come.
On Jan. 25, parents of students at OLM received an email from school officials informing them the school will close at its current location after this year and join with Branford’s St. Mary School (SMS) to form a new East Shoreline Catholic Academy (ESCA) at the current SMS location.
SMS in Branford, part of the Archdiocese of Hartford, was founded in 1961. While there had been no rumblings of SMS losing its home despite low enrollment, OLM, the main Catholic K-8 school serving Madison and Guilford since 1954, was informed in January 2016 by the Sisters of Mercy (SOM) that it would not renew the school’s lease after the 2017-’18 year.
Representatives from SOM said after the initial announcement was made that they held hopes to preserve the land the school currently sits on, possibly through a conservation trust.
Members of the OLM community then formed a vision committee to try to find a new home for the school. In 2017, it was announced that the lease had been extended and the school could stay on until 2023, theoretically giving the community more time to plan for the future of the school. The Jan. 25 email from Rev. Stephen M. Sledesky of Guilford’s St. George Parish and Rev. Daniel J. McLearen of St. Margaret Parish sent to parents made it clear that the timeline has been shortened and a decision already made.
At the Feb. 7 parents’ meeting, community members in the audience were clearly still upset by the news and the way it was released, and with the two pastors. However, the Vision Committee presented a new plan to break with the local parishes and keep OLM at its current location in Madison as an independent Catholic school.
The Building
At the March 28 parents’ meeting, committee member John Picard presented three potential building options the committee is investigating. The preferred option is to keep the school at its current home at 149 Neck Road in Madison. After productive conversations with SOM, Picard said that is still a viable option.
“We have made a very generous offer to the SOM—for one year, for five, and to purchase,” he said. “I don’t know what they are going to say. I do know two months ago they were ready to sell us the property.”
As the committee waits for an answer on a lease or purchase, Picard said the committee is also investigating a building in Clinton, located right off I-95 at exit 63 on John Street. Picard said the building is 34,000 square feet—nearly 10,000 square feet larger than OLM’s current facility—and is currently vacant. Picard said the building has an additional bonus: Moving the school to Clinton would move it out of the Hartford Diocese and into the Norwich Diocese.
The last option would keep the school in Madison. Picard said he has spoken with town officials and is sitting down with the superintendent of schools and Board of Education next week to discuss a potential option.
“There may be a possibility, and I am not going to get into the school, that we could actually stay right in Madison…They have been very open to discussions about it, so that is another option,” he said.
The school in question is Island Avenue Elementary School, which is slated to close in June 2019 as the Madison Public School District looks to contract in response to declining enrollment. Picard said the committee will have a concrete option for parents soon.
“What I am going to ask you is to give us two to three more weeks to come back to you with a definitive, concrete [statement that] we are moving to Clinton, we are staying in Madison, or they all fell through. We are going to present these options to you because we feel strongly that this school has to continue,” he said.
Reinvigorating Catholic Education
When the committee first announced a plan to keep the school operational, it promised OLM will continue to provide Catholic-based education, rigorous academics, a fully integrated pre-K-8 model with before-care and after-care, and continued focus on technology in academics. Picard said the committee is looking to seriously improve the academics offered at the school.
“It used to be years ago you went to Catholic school and Catholic school was better than the public school,” he said. “That is no longer the case. We need to change that.”
Committee member Jessica Mularski, an OLM alum and a public school teacher with multiple masters’ degrees in education fields, was tasked with designing a presenting a curriculum for the new school, which will likely be re-branded as Our Lady of Mercy Preparatory Academy.
“For Catholic schools not to be able to thrive in the society that we are living in, we have to take a look at that,” she said. “Why are we not doing better? We are doing a really good job of helping instill morals in our kids and finding God and that’s a beautiful thing, but somewhere along the line the education froze.”
With the new model, Mularski hopes to change that. She said OLM students will get a strong foundation including how to apply and reflect on what they have learned. The school will move to standard-based grading, individualized education plans for each student, use of technology in the classroom; and a curriculum that is a hybrid of classic and innovative education, focusing on core studies like English and language arts, but also looking ahead at areas like coding and technology to prepare students for all aspects of the modern world.
“Our goal is that every student will be fluent in Spanish by 6th grade,” she said. “We are developing and encouraging students to live in a world that is not yet here and a very real potential is that we will be a bilingual country so students we have to know Spanish on some level. They will have foreign language four days a week. At middle school once they reach that fluency we will open up to Italian, French, and Latin.”
Committee members said a board of trustees has been established to work with several superintendents who have volunteered to help the board interview potential principals. Once a principal is hired, the board and the principal can then begin hiring teachers.
The Path Forward: Plans and Challenges
With building options and a curriculum on the table, Committee member Mariusz Sajdak reviewed for parents some of the legal and business milestones the committee has made.
To date, the committee has formalized a legal structure with separate entities for school operations and for fundraising, submitted a 501c3 application for non-profit status, established an initial Board of Directors and officers for an OLMStrong Foundation, and raised $1.3 million for school operations. Sajdak said the financial model for the new school is grounded in solid practices, a balanced budget, and transparency so parents know where their dollars are being spent.
“This has to be run like a business,” he said. “We have looked at some of the expenditures we can possibly cut and some expenditures where we don’t really have an explanation as to what they were spent on. Those are the things we are not going to have going forward. Every dollar is going to be reflected to the parents, so that you all have the ability to scrutinize and ask questions.”
Sajdak said in the new school tuition rates will stay the same. He said as long as OLM has anywhere from 90 to 110 students enrolled, the tuition rates work. OLM currently has an enrollment of 140. Going forward, Sajdak said parents need to stay involved and help out. One parent in the audience mentioned it would be easier to stay involved if there was more information shared with the public on a regular basis.
Both Sajdak and Mularski said the point about communication is well taken, but Mularski said there was need for some radio silence in the past few weeks.
“It’s not like we are just starting off with this beautiful amazing, Utopian school that we are designing. We have a lot of resistance and it’s very real and it’s to an extent that you can’t even really fully imagine,” she said. “I, as a practicing Catholic for my entire life, I can’t even explain to people what we have seen. So if we give too much, it becomes a problem for us logistically. Curriculum stuff we can give, because there is nothing that you can really squelch us with, but especially when it comes to buildings and meetings, I am just saying we have to be careful about what we let out because as soon as we say something small, then a door gets closed.”