Marti West, Superintendent of the Archdiocese of San Antonio Catholic Schools, attended a presentation at the 2017 NCEA Leadership Summit where she heard Matt Davidson share insights from the Institute’s experience developing and implementing a Catholic School Improvement process at an arch/diocese system level. The project presented was The Philadelphia Story: How Culture and Content Create the Foundation for Success. Ms. West had come to the conference thinking about two key issues: student retention and the desire to build and sell the Catholic School experience to the greater San Antonio community. Her interest was sparked and her desire to bring the same Catholic School Improvement data process to San Antonio launched.
The Institute worked with Ms. West’s team and began implementing the Catholic School Improvement Survey (CSIS): Feedback from Parents with elementary and secondary schools in the San Antonio Archdiocese in the 2018-2019 school year. The data gathered here will help inform principals, pastors and school leadership about instructional quality, Catholic formation, constituent relations, operational excellence, financial health and overall parent satisfaction with their child’s/children’s experience in their school. With these results in hand, schools will be able to impact retention and build up the quality of student experience. Through the continuous improvement process guided by the Institute, schools will identify strengths and weaknesses, gain consensus on key issues, clarify current state, define desired state, develop action plans, and implement specific and targeted action steps.