Photograph by Peter Newcomb
At Central Catholic/St. Nicholas, a 100-percent African-American school in North St. Louis, the principal, Sister Gail, has implemented programs and a curriculum that focuses on success through character development, asset management and huge amounts of praise and caring for her students, kindergarteners through eighth graders. She wanted to be a nun since junior high, and in her mid-20s, while teaching in an Atlanta public school, decided to become a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, which has its mother house in St. Louis. Sister Gail has a bachelor’s degree from Spellman, a master’s in theology from Xavier University’s Institute of Black Catholic Studies and a master’s in education from Saint Louis University. All that education has led her to a simple conclusion: “Never give up on our children,” she says. “It really doesn’t matter which neighborhood they come from, how much income their family has.”
How important is it to the parents that their children go to your school? The highest percentage of our families are giving 20 percent of their income to make sure that their children have a quality education. The tuition is $2,500, but the actual cost to us is $4,800. The bulk of our families are working families with limited incomes but are willing to sacrifice to make sure that their children have an opportunity to succeed at life. One lady whose children were here moved three times in one school year to a smaller and smaller apartment so she would pay less and less rent so she would have enough money to pay the tuition.
What have you done at St. Nicholas? Our whole purpose is to try to ensure student success. With children coming from various backgrounds, we have to create a common ground so that every child is successful. What we started doing in the beginning was leveling the playing field academically. But we were still looking at children coming to school who are not focused completely on the assignment and the lesson.
What was the next step? We started moving into really developing the emotional IQ of the children. I feel we can equip them with the social and emotional skills to deal with not just negotiation but how to look at life in such a way that they can come up with a win-win solution for everyone.
What does “intentional character education” mean? People assume that just because we are a Catholic school we have it easy because we can teach religion and talk about God. But you have to connect that faith to everyday practical experiences. There is not a day that goes by that a child doesn’t touch me in a way that shows me that they really got it. They have taken it to another level in ways I never thought of. You can see you are really creating a generation of children who are not only competent academically but who are going to be a really emotional, moral people who care about the people around them, who empathize and decide to make positive choices to make not only that person’s life better. We try to celebrate that. We have prayers every day and we highlight the children who have done something to help someone else in the community. You’d be surprised how the next day everyone is trying to do the same thing.
At a time when some St. Louis parishes are being consolidated, how is St. Nicholas able to go on—especially considering the disparity between tuition and cost per student? On the North Side, we are down to three Catholic elementary schools. Right now our enrollment is healthy enough and the work of our development committee keeps us alive, but by no means is it easy to keep funded. One of the churches supporting our school, St. Bridget’s, closed. One of our supporters died, so that money was no longer available. Charlie Walbrandt came to help one of the eighth graders who had difficulty paying the tuition. He didn’t want her to have to leave, so he made up the difference. That started a relationship with the school.
Are you the only fund-raiser? Charlie had the foresight to realize I couldn’t fund raise on this level by myself. Betsy Mullins started a development board. Jim Cunnane and Charlie Walbrandt are co-presidents. Without them, we really would not be here. There are 12 people on the development committee and we are still looking for more.
What percentage of your graduates go on to high school and then to college? Ninety-five percent of the kids get high school diplomas. We are working on 90 percent going to college.
Are African-American studies an integral part of St. Nicholas’ curriculum? We try to integrate black history throughout the year. We look at it in math, science, all the other disciplines so the children don’t have the mistaken impression that [African-Americans] haven’t contributed to the world and to society.
Is there one essential component to a child’s success? The key is consistency, to make sure that each adult within the community understands the systems that create success and that we are all approaching it in the same manner. When the children get the same message from everyone, they tend to fall in line faster.
