St. Francis of Assisi School is featured on the cover of this month’s St. Anthony Messenger, the national magazine of Franciscan media in the United States.
Reported by John Feister over the winter during Black History Month, the story paints a picture of a school with an important history and mission, struggling to survive.
“It’s not as if St. Francis of Assisi School hasn’t struggled before,” the story begins, looking back to its founding in 1951.
A school for black children in the Mississippi Delta run by Catholic priests and nuns, all of them Yankees, was a foreign idea at the time.
Franciscan Friars of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, headquartered in Franklin, Wisconsin, has stuck to its original mission of bringing quality education to students who needed it for the last 57 years, as has the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity.
The Rev. Joachim “Kim” Studwell is the current pastor of St. Francis parish. He figures largely in the story, acknowledging that the racial divide in Greenwood still figures into the dynamics of the school and Franciscans, in some Greenwood circles, are still seen as troublemakers, harking back to the Greenwood Movement boycott of 50 years ago, organized in part by then-pastor Nathaniel Machesky.
St. Francis School’s principal, Jackie Lewis, who graduated from the school and whose mother and daughters all attended St. Francis, talks about the difficulties of keeping the school’s doors open at a time of dwindling enrollment and financial challenges.
Teacher recruitment is difficult, Lewis notes in the story. St. Francis used to draw retired public school teachers, but now those teachers are burned out at retirement and not looking for a new teaching job.
Sister Kathleen Murphy, who teaches kindergarten and oversees religious education at the school, acknowledges a larger number of unchurched families than when she first came here 35 years ago.
“We teach the Catholic faith, whether the students are Catholic or not,” Murphy said in the story.
Along with a strong academic emphasis, St. Francis continues to offer daily religion classes, weekly Mass, prayer services, ashes on Ash Wednesday and other Catholic practices.
The school is funded in part by Franciscan provinces and outside donations, monies that are harder to come by than in days past as well.
Studwell characterizes St. Francis as an alternative to what is referred to throughout the article as “the white private charter” and failing public schools.
The challenge, he concludes, is moving from a “paternalism model to co-responsibility,” engaging families financially more fully than in the past. That’s a tough task when serving in one of the poorest places in the country, but St. Francis’ survival depends on a stronger financial foundation.
In April, St. Francis was uncertain whether it would open its doors this fall, but enrollment met the minimum number of students needed to forge ahead for one more year.
The magazine profile depicts a school with a rich history and an important place in the community facing “days of uncertainty.” It ends with instructions on how to make donations to the school.
Andy Lo, who regularly takes photographs for the Commonwealth, provided color photos for the multi-page spread.
To read the story, visit www.StAnthonyMessenger.org.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
