CMSONAIR | Staying Connected to Urban Students and Their Parents

In recent years, many Catholic grade schools have had to shut their doors due to funding issues. This trend has accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Partnership Schools, a network of nine elementary and middle schools in urban areas of New York and Cleveland, is trying to stem the tide of Catholic school closings. Their network is taking a unique approach to funding, relying heavily on philanthropic support and keeping costs down, while maintaining high-quality education. In this episode, we hear from Jill Kafka, the executive director of Partnerships Schools, and Abigail Akano, principal of Sacred Heart School in the Bronx, one of the schools in the Partnership network. They describe how the network works, how they seek to include immigrant students and their parents, and why they created an emergency COVID-19 assistance fund to support families in their network.