---

You have often heard the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

When Katie Stalker started last October as new principal at Mater Christi School in Albany after 20 years in public education, that was something that she saw right away. The teachers and parents, the school board, and the faithful at the parish, which is located right next to the school on Hurst Avenue surrounded by well-kept houses just off New Scotland Avenue, all play a huge and willing part in the success of the school.

“I had heard that there is a strong community here but you just don’t know how involved everyone is until you are here. So that was really positive,” Stalker said. “I will tell you, coming from the world of public education and having been a principal, you wear all the hats here. … They will tell you as the principal of a parish school, you are the superintendent and the principal; you have the business office hat. Marketing and advertising was new for me and I have strong support in my school board … and they bring some of that business savvy to the work and we pull up our sleeves and we get through it together. We are trying to come up with creative ideas to increase our enrollment and we have people who are sitting at the table saying, ‘Let’s make that happen.’ ”

While there are many rowing the boat (which Stalker likes to say often) toward success, she is the captain of the ship/school, which is pre-K3 to grade 8, and has been the catalyst for much of the change and collaboration in a short period of time, such as:

•  The early childhood program at Mater Christi continues to be very successful and Stalker wanted to keep that momentum going. SUNY New Paltz offered a “micro credential” in the science of reading and “we signed up all of our pre-K3 through elementary-school teachers and our middle-school ELA teacher to have that training so we had this common foundation of the research that supports the best practices in teaching children how to read. From there, we adopted a new curriculum.”

•  Last year a drama club production — “Mary Poppins JR.” — was added and was a huge success and this year the club will do “Alice in Wonderland JR.” The school board also organized the first-ever First Responders vs. Mater Christi CYO game and “we are looking for that to become an annual tradition. These things only happen because we have so many people stepping up to say I want to do this for this school,” Stalker added.

•  Stalker had written a proposal (Professional Development iReady Classroom Math and Magnetic Reading programs) for a Higher Powered Learning Grant and the school was awarded $25,000. Stalker shared it with Blessed Sacrament School and All Saints Catholic Academy, turning it into a consortium grant that could benefit all three schools, while adding another level of collaboration.

“When I started here I reached out to the other two Albany Catholic school principals (Traci Johnson at All Saints Academy and Alexandra Morazan at Blessed Sacrament) and I said we should meet, and we started meeting monthly (and asking each other) ‘How can we pool our resources like with this grant? How can we share?’ ” Stalker said. “I was new to the world of private schools, so Traci Johnson at All Saints Academy has been a great resource for me, helping me navigate the differences between the two worlds of private and public school. 

“I bring a wealth of knowledge from public schools such as multi-tiered systems of support and Alex from Blessed Sacrament had come from the world of charter schools which is also different. You have public schools, you have charter schools, which have this little bit of both feel to it, and then the private schools.”

This collaboration between the three schools happened before Father Daniel Quinn was named pastor of all three schools and parishes and he is on board to help strengthen the continued collaboration of the Albany Catholic schools. And next month the three schools, along with St. Thomas the Apostle in Delmar, will take a middle-school field trip to Auriesville for a day retreat, something that hasn’t been done in recent memory. Father Quinn has also taken on the task of training all the students — who have made second-grade sacraments starting with third grade through eighth grade — to be altar servers. 

“If they are not comfortable, they don’t have to be an altar server, but why not train them as part of their religious education,” said Stalker, who grew up in Troy and attended St. Augustine’s Church. “Because some of the feedback that we are getting from our parish community is that they want to see the children more at the Masses.”

Collaborating with the parish, which is willing to help and wants to be involved, is vital to the school’s success. Parishioner donations have funded the school bus for the field trip to Auriesville and the purchase of state-of-the-art microphones for the drama club’s production last year.

“That was something last year that was really big for me: how do we build this stronger parish-school partnership with a lot of leadership change in both places,” she said. “When we had our open house at the end of Catholic Schools Week, I said this isn’t just an open house to increase enrollment, this is an open house where we are inviting our parish community. Come see what you support.”

What they will see this year is more of the students that is for sure. The entire school will go to Mass every Friday during the year and Stalker is offering each middle-school student (grades 5-8) a chance to earn up to 10 service credit hours each year through eighth grade. “The service credit hours have to be service to the parish or the school and if you serve as an altar server that counts,” she said. 

As you can see, there is momentum building and Stalker wants to keep the ship going in the right direction.

“All of our core teachers, elementary and middle school, are returning this year and we have a lot of people that are starting to build on the years. The school would have teachers that would stay here for their careers and it feels like we are rebuilding that,” she said. “I have the staff on board and they are speaking this common language and when I talk about the school board they don’t just come with ideas — this is what we should be doing — they are like this is something that we should do and I am going to help you do it. Everyone is rowing in the right direction. … It is an exciting time to find all these different stakeholder groups rowing in the same direction even though we still have far to travel.”

---