Page 14: NAPC*IS

NAPC*IS: the Hope and Promise of Catholic Education

by Eileen Cubanski

The Seed is Planted
In the summer of 1995, four schools came together for their annual retreat at Fr. Joseph Fessio’s large, rustic retreat house tucked away in the hills high above Guerneville, CA, beautifully named for its serene surroundings, Agua Dulce del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus (Sweet Water of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) and formed the National Association of Private Catholic* and Independent Schools (NAPC*IS).

Three of these schools had been mentored in their starting and early operations by Francis Crotty, co-founder, with his wife Margaret, Jerry and Dianne Muth and Vince and Lucille Cortese, of Kolbe Academy in Napa, California. Since opening its doors in 1980, Kolbe Academy had enjoyed a great record of success and a growing reputation as a leader in the preservation and promotion of faithful Catholic education. Besides its uncompromising Catholic identity and standards of academic excellence, it was Kolbe Academy’s model of organization that was gaining attention, as more and more parents were looking for an alternative to public and diocesan schools for the education of their children.

It was bad enough that public schools were in a downward spiral to academic oblivion, but time was proving that the vacuum left by empty learning was quickly filled by pop-psychology and social experiments that would have students as fodder for every fad, trend, and life experience, including the most insidious project of all to use the children to undermine the family structure.

Parents were having just as difficult a time navigating through diocesan schools, if not more so. Like its public school counterpart, Catholic schools were in the business of sex education. In the early ‘80s, it was under the guise of “family relationships” to address the Aids crisis. This was the final straw for many parents who were already wondering where all the “good Sisters” had gone, and what had happened to the catechism, praying the rosary, frequent confession. Parent complaints about sex education in Catholic schools, or the selection of programs and texts being used, made them the problem. Treatment at the hands of school personnel and diocesan officials left parents scandalized and dismayed. There was even no recourse for parents to their pastor, who had long ago lost control of his parish school to the centralized bureaucracy that had taken hold in every diocese in the name of the Catholic School Department. What was established to be an advisory body to the pastor, became the policy setting authority for Catholic schools. Once parish schools became diocesan schools, bureaucrats, not parents, became the primary educators of children.

The ‘80’s saw a surge of Catholic parents opting to home school. This phenomenon continues today, with Catholic families continuing to be the fastest growing population within the home schooling movement. Yet, another alternative was needed by those families for whom home schooling was an impossible option. Hence, the alternative of private independent schools took center stage in the realm of possibility.