Catholic Education

TORONTO - Spiritan Father Michael Troy, founding father and principal at Toronto’s Neil McNeil High School, had an untraditional way of thinking, said Fr. Gerald FitzGerald.

“There was a rapport, a relationship and a casualness between the priest-teachers and the boys that did not exist elsewhere and that was the unique spirit of Neil McNeil,” said FitzGerald, a fellow Spiritan who was a seminarian under Troy in Dublin and a science teacher at Neil McNeil. “He came in at a unique time in the spread of Catholic education — and I think he left a stamp on it.

“I think he shook up Catholic education,” said FitzGerald. “He came here with no preconceived ideas and he brought with him a tremendous freshness.”

TORONTO - While Ontario’s full-day kindergarten program is in high demand and considered by several Catholic education groups an “investment” in the future, there remain concerns.

The provincial government introduced the full-day kindergarten program in September 2010 at about 600 schools across the province. By September 2012, there will be close to triple that number of schools offering the program.

Among the issues that need to be worked out are funding and after-school care, according to some Catholic groups. Dan Barrett, president of the Toronto Association of Parents in Catholic Education, says once the full-day kindergarten classes end for the day, making an arrangement for care afterwards can be “problematic.”

OTTAWA - Canadian Catholic Campus Ministry (CCCM) has devised a tool to help guide students in choosing a university where there` can keep their faith alive.

The tool can help students find a school where there is a “vibrant, active student ministry” that will help “nurture their faith” and allow them to “blossom,” said CCCM co-ordinator Lori Neale.

The 2011 Status Report on Catholic Campus Ministry in Canada is the first of a series of status reports on the state of campus ministry across Canada. Neale said CCCM will track the information by doing a similar study in another two or three years.

TORONTO - As the Toronto Catholic District School Board hammers out its equity policy over the next several weeks, with public consultations scheduled for the end of March, some parents and trustees say “stronger language” is needed to ensure that the province’s policy to promote diversity in “gender identity” doesn’t bypass Catholic school’s denominational rights.

But others fear stronger language could have adverse consequences if Catholic school board’s denominational rights are ever the focus of a court challenge.

Last year, school boards began implementing equity and inclusive education policies, with guidelines from the education ministry.

The province introduced its equity and education strategy in 2008 to prohibit discrimination based upon race, religion and sexual orientation. It became law in 2009.

OTTAWA - A French Catholic school board in Northern Ontario has been ordered to compensate three members of a controversial religious group after an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal found the board guilty of discrimination.

On Dec. 15, the tribunal ordered the Conseil Scolaire Catholique Franco-Nord to pay unspecified compensation to Daniel, Michel and Sylvie Chabot, siblings who belong to the Raelian Movement and who operate the Academy of Pleasurology and Emotional Intelligence (APEI).

TORONTO - The head of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association is calling for a popular aboriginal play to tour Southern Ontario schools to teach students about tackling racism.

James Ryan joined Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, and Isadore Day, Regional Grand Chief for Lake Huron Region and representative of the Union of Ontario Indians, in proposing an aboriginal education initiative that combats cultural stereotypes about First Nations students.

TORONTO - A team from Blessed Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School in Scarborough recently won the top prize at this year’s National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Design Competition in Rochester, N.Y.

Beating out 10 other teams from New York State, the all-girls robotics team designed and built a robot which had to pick up as many white cans as possible from their field positions on an obstacle course and place them in the “finish box” within a three-minute period. “We were the only team competing from Canada,” said Mary Charles Hills, one of the team’s teacher advisors.

St. Jerome’s University’s new vice-president and academic dean is lined up to take over July 1, but he isn’t really new to the Catholic liberal arts college at the University of Waterloo.

James S. Frank attended St. Jerome’s High School as a teenager, was a member of the St. Jerome’s University Catholic Community for 36 years, was married to his wife Jackie by one of his priest-professors while studying at St. Jerome’s and helped initiate the children’s Sunday school program when his own kids were attending church at the university in the 1980s.

MARKHAM, Ont. - Brother André High School in Markham has officially added “St.” to its name.

It’s the first school in the archdiocese of Toronto to officially change its name by adding the “St.” designation since the Quebec-born saint’s Oct. 17 canonization.

The school is working with the board to change its name on the school building as well as developing a new school logo, said interim principal Peter Bahen.

TORONTO - On the heels of a $2-million budget surplus, the Toronto Catholic District School Board should soon be out of supervision, provincially appointed supervisor Richard Alway announced at the board's inaugural meeting Dec. 8.

Alway said having a balanced budget is one of the steps that will kick-start the return of decision-making powers to the elected members of the board, which has been under provincial supervision since 2009. He added that he would soon be submitting a report to Ontario's education minister to recommend that local powers to be restored to the board. This could happen as early as January, he said.