Thomas Carroll never attended a Catholic school. Now, his job is to reform them.
“I became superintendent of the Archdiocese of Boston’s schools having never attended Catholic schools, taught in Catholic schools, or led a Catholic school … but I think what that gave me is a fresh set of eyes when I walked in,” Carroll told Our Sunday Visitor.
This summer, Carroll embarked on a new mission: to help archdioceses across the country reform their schools by hiring staff members on fire with the Catholic Faith through his nonprofit, the Catholic Talent Project.
“We care a lot more about the students and their souls than we do about the institution of the schools and the building,” Carroll said. “We’re in the business of saving souls, and we take that very seriously, but it requires hiring the right people.”
For five years, Carroll served as the superintendent of the Archdiocese of Boston Catholic school system, a school system that serves close to 32,000 students, employs 3,000 staff members and operates over 100 schools. During his tenure, he reshaped Catholic education in the city by emphasizing faculty formation and hiring staff members focused on evangelization.
What Catholic schools need
“What’s being done now in Catholic schools simply isn’t working,” Carroll said. “We have a lot of educators whose faith, at best, is lukewarm, and a lot of teachers are living in open contradiction to the Faith. I just don’t think they inspire kids to embrace their faith.”
Carroll immediately recognized this trend when he began as Boston’s superintendent. But before he could fix the problem, he wanted to understand why parents chose to send their children to Catholic schools.
“A lot of people send kids to Catholic schools to make sure that they stay Catholic and that their children grow in their faith and in virtue,” Carroll said. “That is a very serious pledge that we make to parents.”
In Boston, Carroll went to work restructuring the archdiocesan school. His primary method was hiring new principals for many schools and creating the St. Thomas More Teaching Fellows, a post-college program that places college graduates in local Catholic schools.
“Anyone, no matter what they studied in their four years of college, has the possibility of becoming a St. Thomas More Fellow,” Carroll explained. “The one thing we won’t negotiate is that we only hire people who live in complete accord with the Catholic Church.”
The development of the St. Thomas More Teaching Fellows provided Carroll with a way to address another issue within Catholic schools: the feminization of the school system.
Carroll explained that since the 1970’s, women have made up the majority of faculty at Catholic schools. He says that this is a problem because children, especially young boys, are often more inspired to live out the Faith when they see strong, faithful men serving as their teachers.
“We had to address the feminization of the Church, by which I mean, there’s virtually no men teaching preschool to eighth grade in Catholic schools, other than maybe the gym teacher and the custodian,” Carroll said. “The faith of these young boys is disproportionately influenced by the faith of a significant male in their life, hopefully, their father, but if not that, then a teacher.”
“We need to have the kind of guys, guys as teachers, who these young boys find captivating.”
So, Carroll tries to ensure that each fellowship class is made up of 50% men and 50% women.
Courtesy Catholic Talent Project
Transforming a school identity
During his tenure in Boston, Carroll began to see the fruit of both the fellowship and hiring of new school leadership. He shared that it has helped not just children but entire families to pursue the Faith.
“Since we are explicitly hiring people with missionary zeal and people who are looking to help children to deepen their faith, we’re seeing that happen,” Carroll said. “We also see in turn that when the kids take the Faith more seriously and they start asking their parents to bring them to church on Sunday if the parents have fallen out of the habit, it also leads to the reversion of some of the Catholics as well to a deeper faith.”
Three years ago, Suzanne Banach, principal at St. Mary of the Hill’s grade school in Milton, Massachusetts, hired her first St. Thomas More Teaching Fellow. Since then, she has hired three more.
“Three years ago, I had just lost my science teacher days before school, and Thomas Carroll provided me with one of the St. Thomas More Fellows program,” Banach shared with Our Sunday Visitor. “The following year, I brought more St. Thomas More fellows. And then this year, I have four at my school because I have been so impressed by what they bring to the community.”
Banach has noticed a transformational shift within her school since the fellows began, and she began emphasizing faculty formation at Carroll’s suggestion. She shared that a number of students have converted, and many are taking their prayer lives more seriously.
“What I see happening is that first and foremost, we possess a stronger Catholic identity here,” Banach said. “We as a teaching staff are going to be witnesses, and we are fostering within our students, like having them get to know Christ, opening their hearts to Christ, knowing God’s love for one another and for them.”
She believes that the Thomas Fellows have played a critical role in this shift.
“The Fellows are deeply committed, and they feel called to our school. This is not just a job, and they are certainly not doing it for the pay,” Banach said. “They felt like it was a calling from God to come to the school. They possess like this evangelizing spirit, and they truly feel like they’re called to minister to these students.”
The Catholic Talent Project
There is still work to be done in Boston, as it’s a large school system. Carroll, however, sees the progress that his team has made and believes that if his strategy can work in Boston, it can work anywhere.
“There’s a lot of work. I’m not pretending that everything’s been fixed in Boston, but I think we’ve turned the corner, which is impressive in a very difficult, hyper-secularized part of the country and working in a very large school system,” Carroll said. “It will take a while to turn it around, but if we could do it in Boston, we can do it anywhere.”
That is exactly what Carroll hopes to do with the Catholic Talent Project. Launched this summer, Carroll hopes that the Catholic Talent Project will help dioceses across the country reorient their school systems to emphasize evangelization and faith formation.
“Pope Paul VI once said that modern man more willingly listens to witnesses than to teachers, and if he listens to teachers, it’s because they’re witnesses,” Carroll said. “So the core mission of the Catholic Talent Project is to find faithful Catholic witnesses to work in Catholic schools at every level, starting with classroom teachers.”
Carroll hopes to begin working with two new dioceses every single year and slowly expand across the country. The Catholic Talent Project’s next stop will be the Archdiocese of San Francisco, where Carroll has begun working to establish St. Thomas More Fellows and work with school leadership to promote an emphasis on evangelization within schools.
“Our next stop is San Francisco; we are intentionally not taking the easiest places to build vibrant school systems. They don’t need our help. San Francisco and Boston do,” Carroll said. “If we can pull it off in Boston and San Francisco, it will send a message that if you can reform the schools in these really tough places, you really can turn the fate around of Catholic schools all across the country.”
