These powerful words from Kate Gross, Director of Advancement at Powers Catholic High School in Flint, capture the essence of the mission behind the Diocese of Lansing’s Stewardship for Saints and Scholars campaign.

As we get back into the swing of a new school year, there’s no better time to delve into the framework of the campaign, determined to fortify our Catholic schools. Enthusiastically supported by Bishop Earl Boyea, this effort is dedicated to making an authentically Catholic education ever more on-mission, affordable and accessible, ensuring that a Catholic education is possible for all families who desire it for their children.

What do the campaign priorities mean?

• On-mission: Attract, form, train and retain excellent, faithful teachers and administrators.
• Affordable: Substantially grow financial assistance available to current and new school families.
• Accessible: Improve assistance for children with special needs, while also providing funds to enhance services through the four regional diocesan high schools.
• Local Initiatives: Invest in parish school, religious education/faith formation, parish-sponsored homeschool initiatives or other urgent, local needs.

At the heart of the campaign is the knowledge that teachers and administrators play a critical role in the Catholic school system. These educators are responsible for imparting academic knowledge, for teaching facts and figures, logic and reasoning, and science and technology. But educators in Catholic schools have another major responsibility: to model Gospel values and nurture the spiritual development of their students.

Catholic teachers guide students in their faith, teaching them to integrate prayer and spiritual practice into their daily lives. “Prayer should be in everything we do,” Gross said.

“Teachers are teaching children the way to take home prayer and prayer life,” she said. “Parents say they didn’t know how to spontaneously pray until their child came home doing it. That’s where teachers are leading the way — those children are becoming apostles of their faith.” 

Gross has long been part of the Catholic school community. She taught at St. Robert Catholic School in Flushing for 15 years before moving into her present role at Powers this summer, and she and her husband chose to send all four of their sons to Catholic schools. “The relationships and the community that we found in Catholic schools are unmatched. I’ve never seen them anywhere else.”

This sense of community, of togetherness, is integral to the mission of Catholic education, fostering an environment where faith and academic excellence go hand in hand. Teachers play a pivotal role in building this community and creating a supportive atmosphere where students can thrive both academically and spiritually. 

However, teaching is a challenging profession, and many schools struggle to retain quality educators. Nationally, 44 percent of teachers (public and private) leave the profession within the first five years. Our diocese replaces an average of 50 teachers each year, about 9 percent of all teachers. We have an additional obstacle: The average teacher’s starting salary is significantly lower than both the national and state averages.

To address these challenges, the diocese has developed two key funding sources: the Excellent Educators Fund and the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Endowment, which together aim to secure the future with $4.5 million, along with a $20 million endowment, to address immediate needs.

The “Sign, Train and Retain” program offers new hires signing bonuses and a three-year training program, while the “Invest in the Best” program provides all teachers and administrators with retention bonuses and yearly formation grants.

Tom Maloney, who has dedicated decades to the diocese’s Catholic schools as a teacher, administrator and now superintendent, highlights the urgency of these efforts: “As the bishop has said, the world is changing. The world is becoming ever more hostile to our Catholic faith and to our Christian way of life. And that is why the primary goal for this capital campaign of Stewardship of Saints and Scholars is to raise funds to help our schools be ever more on-mission by recruiting, training, and retaining those teachers and administrators — those on-fire disciples — who hear the call to teach in our Catholic schools.”

The Diocese of Lansing’s Stewardship for Saints and Scholars campaign shines as a beacon of hope and commitment to the mission of Catholic education. By supporting our teachers and investing in their formation, we are ensuring that our schools can continue to be places where faith and reason and heart and mind come together to form the saints and scholars of tomorrow.