From staff reports
Venango Region Catholic School on Thursday announced the next step in its ongoing planning efforts aimed at strengthening and maintaining Catholic education in Venango County.
This will include an organizational reconfiguration that will provide opportunities to enhance many of the current strengths of Venango Catholic High School and St. Stephen and St. Patrick elementary schools as well as adding academic programs, according to a press release from the Erie Diocese.
New approaches will be utilized to bring together seventh- and eighth-grade students from St. Stephen in Oil City and St. Patrick in Franklin into a new middle school program housed at St. Stephen, the diocese said.
The resulting grade offerings for the regional school will be pre-K through eighth grade at St. Stephen, pre-K through sixth grade at St. Patrick, and freshman through senior years at Venango Catholic High School in Oil City.
“The board of directors is confident this is the best opportunity for the region at this time. It’s an important step as we continue to develop a strategic plan for the future of Catholic education based on the realities of our area,” said Greg Merkel, chair of the Venango Region Catholic School board.
“We are grateful and excited to have this opportunity,” Merkel added. “We look forward to working with our faculty, staff and families in the continuing development of the new pre-K-12 school. As we move forward, we are hopeful that the families of students of all faiths and at all grade levels will join us by enrolling at one our three campuses.”
The board plans to make administrative changes before the beginning of the next academic year. A school president will provide overall leadership for the entire school assisted by a principal who will focus on academic areas, the press release said.
The new president is likely to be named in the near future, at which time parents will be invited to a meet-the-president event, the press release said.
Parents were invited to a private meeting for families Thursday night at Venango Catholic. While some of the details are still to be determined, board members addressed a number of important operational aspects involved in the new school configuration, including transportation requirements supporting the three campuses.
The initiative to create the regional school was undertaken at the request of pastors and school leaders in Venango County and with the full support of the Diocese of Erie Catholic Schools Office.
The Catholic Schools office helped facilitate the effort with a grant from the Religious Education Endowment Fund. Those funds were used to engage the Meitler organization to conduct a comprehensive study that led to the development of the design and its implementation.
