OUR LADY OF TRUST SCHOOL

NEW VENTURE IN CANARSIE

            When parochial schools in Brooklyn and Queens welcome their students for the new academic year in September, three in Canarsie will launch an innovative cooperative venture that will give their schools a new name, an advisory board, a business manager and three separate “campuses.”

            What existed as Holy Family School, St. Jude’s School and Our Lady of Miracles School until this month together will now be known as Our Lady of Trust School, whose ten-member advisory board includes business, finance, instructional and other professionals who have a strong commitment to Catholic education.

            Each of the original schools will serve as a campus of Our Lady of Trust School, functioning with its own principal, faculty and staff, said Dr. Thomas Chadzutko, superintendent of the Catholic School Support Services Office.

            “The goal is to begin a process of sharing educational and financial resources so as to strengthen the schools as they move into the future,” he said. The principals will continue to run the day-to-day educational operations of their respective schools, he said.

            Guiding the enterprise will be a board comprised of the pastors of the three parishes: Father John J. Amann of Holy Family, Msgr. John E. Delendick of St. Jude’s and Father Francis J. Hughes of Our Lady of Miracles.

            The pastors have turned to a professional with more than 25 years of banking and business experience to serve as business manager. He is Robert Ambrose, who was Msgr. Delendick’s contemporary at Cathedral Prep and College and for three years at the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington. His office will be at the former Holy Family School.

In choosing Our Lady of Trust as the name of the school, suggested by Father Hughes, the pastors have recognized the patroness of the Apostolic Oblates, a secular institute established in Rome in l950, which has a center with five members in Our Lady of Miracles parish. The Oblates have been located there since l975, and for many years a member was the school’s religion coordinator.

The series of steps that culminated in the decision of the Canarsie pastors to embrace the new school concept began with recommendations that appeared in a report by a Task Force on Education, chaired by Msgr. Michael J. Hardiman.

Greater involvement of lay people in the governance of schools was emphasized in the report and endorsed by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio in comments he made at an “education summit” held in February 2005. It is a point the Bishop has made frequently since then, Dr. Chadzutko said.

Father Hughes embraced the concept, and his two neighboring pastors agreed that coordinating their educational programs and drawing on the experience of people outside the schools with interest in Catholic education was a path worth pursuing.

With that as the impetus, the Canarsie pastors volunteered to investigate the potential of unifying their educational resources and embarked on the road that led to establishing Our Lady of Trust School, said Msgr. Delendick, who chairs the board of pastors.

“We wanted to keep our schools open,” said Father Amann, explaining the decision of the three pastors to proceed in the process. “That’s why we volunteered.”

“At the education summit, the Bishop challenged us to have ‘a bold vision,’” Msgr. Delendick added. “We wanted to do something before we reached a critical point for our schools.”

In time the advisory board took shape, and it has met regularly over many months, chaired by Terry Ippolito, a businesswoman who lives in Holy Family parish and as a child attended its parochial school.

“We’re going to do the best we can,” said Father Hughes, who views the new initiative as a means to “make our schools better and stronger now and into the future.”

            Added Msgr. Delendick: “I’m confident that this will happen.”

            Our Lady of Trust School is incorporated and has received its charter from the New York State Department of Education.

            Students, parents and administrators from the three campuses will attend a Mass opening the school year which Bishop DiMarzio will celebrate Monday, Sept. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Holy Family Church.

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