The DePaul Catholic SchoolA Rock of Refuge in Germantown

A Rock of Refuge in Germantown

When visitors come to The DePaul Catholic School, they often remark on how quiet our hallways are. Classroom doors are open and instruction is underway, but in stark contrast to life on the streets—and to the hallways of neighborhood public schools—it’s as silent as a church. Learning time is sacred here.

The 290 children who walk through our doors each morning come to us from homes in one of the nation’s most impoverished inner-city neighborhoods. The lives of many are precarious and hard, burdened by all the chaos that attends urban poverty: crime, hunger, joblessness, despair, broken family structures, and a coldhearted street culture where respect must be fought for. Many people look at the deprivation that afflicts the youths in neighborhoods like Germantown and expect little. Obstacles of grief, want, and turmoil imposed by the conditions of their lives make education challenging at best and, as studies show, a better life almost out of reach.

But for the teachers, staff, and students at The DePaul Catholic School, studies never have the final word. Of course, as educators we hold research in high regard and use its findings in our teaching and planning, but fundamentally we are guided by faith. As followers of St. Vincent DePaul, we are called to see Christ in everyone, especially the poor. We see in our students the image of God and know that each one has received great gifts and is called to great things—academically, socially, and spiritually—if only they are given the opportunity to learn.

Key to our success, and to the Catholic faith we profess to live and seek to instill in our students, is a deep respect that reaches across all the relationships in our school community: teachers to students, students to teachers, staff to parents and caregivers, students to students. The nurturing of mutual respect creates a refuge of predictability and safety where our children can become their best selves, where they are able to not only learn but to excel. It’s not easy—calling them to better things, challenging them, having high expectations—but we have seen our students rise again and again, despite the hardships. They are an inspiration.

The DePaul Catholic School is in Germantown because there is need, which is to say that we are called by God to see God’s face in the families living and struggling here. Our task is to be a refuge of security and stability that allows children to obtain the kind of rigorous, high quality education residents of Germantown wouldn’t otherwise receive. In sharing their lives and their dreams, we have received far more than we have given. We have been welcomed into their neighborhood and their homes, and we have learned from them so much about faith and hope and love—and deep, trusting reliance upon a gracious God. The DePaul Catholic School has thus become a rock of refuge that saves us all. For this, we give thanks.

Sincerely,

Sister Cheryl Ann Hillig, DCPrincipal

Building the Kingdom of God

When visitors come to the DePaul Catholic School, they often remark on how quiet our hallways are. Classroom doors are open and instruction is underway, but in stark contrast to life on the streets—and to the hallways of neighborhood public schools—it’s as silent as a church. Learning time is

sacred here. The 287 children who walk through our doors each morning come to us from homes in one of the nation’s most impoverished inner-city

neighborhoods. The lives of many are burdened with all the

chaos and pain that attend urban poverty: crime, hunger, joblessness, despair, broken family structures, and a coldhearted street culture

where respect must be fought for. Many people look at the deprivation that afflicts the youths in neighborhoods like Germantown and expect little. The obstacles of grief, want, and turmoil imposed by the conditions of their lives make

education challenging at best and, as studies show, a better life

A Rock of Refuge in Be a rock of refuge for me,a mighty stronghold to save me,for you are my rock, my stronghold.For your name’s sake, lead me and guide me.

Psalm 31:2-3

It’s not unusual for the DePaul staff to handle phone calls from desperate parents whose electricity or gas is about to be shut off or respond to pleas for help to pay tuition. According to measures used by the School District of Philadelphia, 100 percent of DePaul students are economically disadvantaged. Under the federally funded National School Lunch Program, 76 percent of our students receive free or reduced-price lunches and all are entitled to free breakfasts.

“Our families depend on the meals the children get at school,” notes Diane Zieg, an administrator who works with teachers and families. When she learned that some students were going hungry over the weekends, she asked a local man who collects and gives away food to the homeless in a nearby park if he would deliver healthy food to the school on Friday afternoons. “Students can’t learn if they’re hungry,” she maintains, “or worried about where their families will find the next meal.” Every Friday she packs up food for some half dozen families and sends the children home with it. “It’s a miracle,” she exclaims, “like the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.” At the end of last school year, Diane used funds left over from a food grant to buy cases of nonperishable groceries and had them delivered to homes that were struggling to get by. One mother called the school to say, “I’ve just been down on my knees. I didn’t know how I was going to feed the kids this summer. This is an answer to my prayer.”

Our Neighborhood: A Profile of Poverty

Most blocks have per capita

income under $15,000

Germantown Map of Per Capita Income 2005-2009Philadelphia, PA 19144

An Answer to Prayer

Marquise was uninspired and undirected when he first stepped into the DePaul family. He usually came to school with unfinished homework and part of his uniform missing. An older brother was in prison and later a second brother was shot and killed. “He was a mess,” Vice Principal Steve Janczewski recalls. By the end of the year, he’d earned mostly “F”s.

Things began to turn around when Marquise was required to come early each day to review with Steve the state of his uniform as well as his schoolwork and to talk through, over and over again, what was expected. He also formed a special bond with Diane Zieg, who lent a sympathetic ear. “Somewhere in the second go-around of the sixth grade he came to believe in himself and in DePaul’s system of academic and behavioral expectations,” Diane explains.

In one year, his scores on standardized tests shot up by 142 percent, reaching well above the national average, and he became a leader in his class, even mentoring a student who was struggling just as he had. Recently, Marquise went home from school to find his house locked. Instead of hanging out on the streets, he took a bus back to his home at DePaul. Says Diane, “That’s huge.”

Even children who come from loving homes in Germantown must know how to make their way on the tough, sometimes brutal, streets of the inner ci ty. Murders, rapes, muggings, carjackings, burglaries, and drug-related shootings—the fallout of anger and hopelessness that often plague the urban poor—can erupt anywhere and anytime. To be safe, children need to become versed in an unspoken street code, where respect, the impression that one can take care of oneself, is relentlessly asserted and defended.

The DePaul Catholic School provides a safe haven not just from outright violence but from the need for hard-edged, streetwise self-assertion. Feeling safe, physically and emotionally, are critical conditions for students, if they are to embrace the vulnerability of not knowing and making mistakes that we call learning.

At The DePaul Catholic School, all members of the community are treated with the dignity of creatures who bear the image of the Creator. There is no need to fight for respect: it is given freely.

Marquise’s Story A Refuge from Violence

Neighborhood of “Dropout Factories”

Researcher s a t Johns Hopk ins University have identified among American high schools nearly 2,000 “dropout factories,” large, under-resourced, over-challenged institutions that year after year fail to graduate most of the students who enter in freshman year. The schools typically serve minority and low-income communities. The three secondary schools in DePaul’s neighborhood qualify as (or approach being) dropout factories and are among the least successful schools in Pennsylvania. The bleak landscape of substandard educational opportunity available to underprivileged children keeps the doorway out of poverty closed and locked. The DePaul Catholic School offers a better choice, a superior education that opens the door to better high schools and better lives.

I’m in HeavenOver the last three years, the neighborhood public middle school reported 94 assault and weapons-related incidents. “In the classroom,” one teacher complained, “kids can curse at us, throw things, and fight—and nothing happens.”

Betsy Lipschutz, a Title One reading teacher, came out of the Philadelphia public school system to DePaul Catholic just this year. The first thing she noticed was how the students hold doors for teachers—and for each other. “Most of the schools I’ve worked in have b e e n i n f a i r l y r o u g h n e i g h b o r h o o d s , ” s h e comments. “What’s interesting to me is that our kids come from the same socioeconomic background, but the climate here is very different. I think a lot of it has to do with the interact ion between the teachers and the students, and the way teachers interact with each other. The kids are treated with respect. It’s just a more caring environment.”

From Betsy’s perspective, “we have no discipline issues.” When problems do arise, they are dealt with, and the students understand that there are consequences to their behavior. This allows her to move right into a reading lesson without having to waste class t ime on disruptive behaviors. “I’m using different muscles now,” she notes. “I’m not using those discipline muscles so much; I’m using the teaching muscles—which is fun! I’m in heaven.”

5th Worst Performing School in PA 57% 4-year graduation rate

Simon Gratz High School

Martin Luther King H.S.

24th Worst Performing School in PA 43% 4-year graduation rate

Germantown High School

7th Worst Performing School in PA 36% 4-year graduation rate

High Quality Catholic Education “In violent neighborhoods, Catholic Schools are instruments of peace,” states the Philanthropy Roundtable’s report on Saving America’s Urban Catholic Schools. “In what can seem like a confused culture, they offer places of order.”

The White House Domestic Policy Council has called faith-based schools “a critical asset.” In a recent study, using measures like test scores and graduation rates, the council found that religious schools close the r a c i a l a n d s o c i o e c o n o m i c achievement gaps by 25 percent. This is especially true of schools serving low-income populations like Germantown. The report further showed that the greater the poverty, the

higher the value and more positive the influence a faith-based school has.

The vocation of DePaul Catholic teachers and staff is to give the children of Germantown the kind of high quality education they would receive in America’s more privileged neighborhoods. Our success is rooted in an academic program and school culture that educate the whole child—mind, heart, and spirit. The mix of rigorous curriculum, religious and moral instruction, daily prayer, and a firm but loving discipline brings order to the confusion of the street and makes the DePaul Catholic School a safe haven for learning, a rock of refuge for Germantown.

Mission Statement

The DePaul Catholic School is an innovative urban elementary school dedicated to carrying out the legacy

of Saint Vincent DePaul by empowering students to be lifelong learners, leaders, and servants who

build the Kingdom of God.

As poverty increases, so does the

value of Catholic Education.

DePaul Rising

2001 2005 2010 2011

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DePaul Catholic Standardized Test Scores-8th Grade

The bright star of the DePaul Catholic School shines not only in the dim skies of Germantown; its light glitters even among the brightest stars in the constellation of American education.

Over the last decade, the academic performance of our students, as measured by standardized tests, has been on a steady rise in all subject areas. Test scores have climbed steeply for class cohorts as they move from one grade to the next, and the overall achievement of DePaul students has risen by 139 percent.

All of our students graduate at or above average in reading and math, which makes every one of them stellar performers in neighborhood public schools. Using Grade Mean Equivalent measures for comparison, our 2011 eighth-grade graduates performed at a level equal to the nation’s high school juniors in reading and to sophomores in math. What’s more, DePaul Catholic’s brilliant academic performance is accomplished at a cost far below what Philadelphia’s public schools spend to achieve less impressive outcomes.

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2010 Standardized Test Scores-8th Grade

The DePaul Catholic School-Percentage at/or Above Average₁Neighborhood Public Middle School-Percentage at/or Above Proficiency₂

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Cost to Educate (per student)

The DePaul Catholic SchoolSchool District of PhiladelphiaCharter Schools

What is the value of a teacher who opens your eyes? Of a class that shows you the way? Of a school that turns your life around? For those born into secure and stable lives, these are great gifts. For underprivileged children whose future is darkened by a paucity of options and opportunity, opening the way to a richer life seems a miracle. For the families of Germantown as well as the larger society, the DePaul Catholic School is that miracle.

Applying Social Return on Investment principles, a standardized method for monetizing the inputs and outputs of a social program, we can demonstrate

the economic value of a DePaul education. Because our students are high academic achievers, we can measure the cost of their education and the success it implies against the projected savings in future healthcare and criminal justice costs typically associated with inner city poverty. Our analysis shows that for every dollar invested in the DePaul Catholic School, there is a 16 dollar return to society, demonstrating in fiscal terms that providing for the wellbeing of the individual serves the good of us all.

HOPE

“Our kids deal with lots of things they shouldn’t have to,” Steve Janczewski says. Mr. J, as he is called, learned long ago that he doesn’t have “the answer” for the pain and misfortune that sometimes grip the lives of students. Much of the answer, he and the DePaul staff believe, lies in getting to know each child and understanding what he or she needs—extra tutoring, a listening ear, some correction, a boost of confidence, maybe even food or help with grieving. It’s about the personal relationships and the trust built of tenacity and love.

“Being closely involved in situations I just knew were hopeless,” he says, “that I saw no way out of—I just kept trying. Then something works out. You just have faith; you walk in faith with the kids and trust that God will guide you. It allows us to create a loving community in the school that can deal with these hard issues, but it also affects our everyday work—how we approach our interactions and our teaching. We don’t have answers, but we do have each other.

“It’s a blessing to be welcomed into these kids’ lives in such an intimate way and to watch them grow into these amazing young people. It has just given me such hope.”

Promise of a Brighter Future

Lucas, a seventh grader from China, spoke almost no English when he enrolled at the DePaul School. Seeing the plight and need of their new classmate, students in Lucas’s homeroom started labeling items in the classroom with their English-language name. They also took turns teaching him and making sure he understood what was going on throughout the day.

“No one directed this,” Sr. Cheryl observes. “The kids took it upon themselves.” It’s an outcome of DePaul’s formation of minds, hearts, and spirits, which permeates the school and lifts everyone. Sr. Cheryl learned about the seventh grade’s unprompted outreach one morning driving a student to school. She asked if Lucas had made friends. “Everyone is his friend,” the student told her, “because he doesn’t understand us yet. So everyone tries to help him.” On the playground, Diane Zieg spotted the girls showing him how to jump rope. “They were so patient with him,” she recalls, “and his smile was so genuine.”

For now, Lucas spends much of his time learning English from his teachers—and the seventh graders. He uses a newly learned word to describe his new school and the warm embrace of his new friends: “cozy.”

“We have 157 parish or regional elementary schools in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia,” superintendent Mary Rochford points out. “If I had to rank the top 10 schools, without a doubt, The DePaul Catholic School would be in that top 10.”

An academy structure helps DePaul to thrive by advancing our commitment to co l laborat ive p lanning and individualized instruction in small learning communities. It’s a model that builds a strong academic foundation for every student. That formula is augmented by the passion of DePaul’s teachers and staff. Their dedication to the school mission is contagious, which is why 67 percent of faculty and staff have been recruited by someone already working in the school.

And their devotion to service and compassion fosters a strong sense of community and purpose that touches everyone in the school. Just over 50 percent of our faculty has taken part in long-term community service programs like City Year, the Peace Corps, and the Jesuit Volunteer Corp. And with an uncommonly large 41 percent of classroom teachers being male, the DePaul School provides role models unavailable in a neighborhood where families are headed mostly by single females.

Franciscan Academy

Grades K-2

Vincentian Academy

Grades 6-8

Marillac Academy

Grades 3-5

Uniquely DePaulCulture of Caring

The DePaul Promise, Inc. is a s e p a r a t e 5 0 1 ( c ) 3 s c h o l a r s h i p organization founded in the summer of 2011 by members of The DePaul Catholic School Administration and Advisory Board. The overarching goal of The DePaul Promise, simply put, is to ensure that The DePaul Catholic School stays around forever. Amidst archdiocesan shuffling, uncertain economic times, and an increasing need for quality education for low-income children and families, we decided that we needed to ensure that The DePaul Catholic School would be able to continue to serve our children and families long into the future. The DePaul Promise, Inc. will raise scholarship funding for low-income

families and explore innovative financing structures for Catholic schools. We are requesting founding donations to The DePaul Promise, Inc. in order to preserve this vital Catholic institution and help many families in great need.

QUICK FACTS FOUNDEDOctober 2011

PURPOSETo raise scholarship funding for low-income families to attend The DePaul Catholic School and to ensure that this critical educational institution stays around forever.

THE DEPAUL PROMISE, INC.

Announcing...The DePaul Promise!

The DePaul Catholic School

44 West Logan Street

Philadelphia, PA 19144

“Come, let us sing to the Lordand shout with joy to the rock who saves us.”

Psalm 95:1