St. Anthony Junior-Senior High School, Maui’s only Catholic high school, is looking to hire a “head of school,” a new position that will oversee campus management and operations, while the principal remains to concentrate on academics, ministry and student activities.
It is a governance model emphasizing economic sustainability adopted in recent years by Oahu’s Catholic high schools. St. Anthony has suffered financial difficulties and a drop in enrollment over the past decade.
Catherine Nobriga Kim
“In today’s world we have to operate as a business in order to remain viable,” said Catherine Nobriga Kim, a member of a new four-person governance committee chosen from the school board to oversee the school’s restructuring plans and to search for the head of school this summer.
Other members of the committee are County of Maui corporation counselor Pat Wong, firefighter Robbie Spenser, and retired businessman Dale Webster.
Nobriga Kim, an executive at Maui Soda and Ice Works, is also the chairwoman of the St. Anthony School board. She and Spenser are St. Anthony graduates.
The current principal, Patricia Rickard, will continue in her position. She will also be an academic representative to the school board and serve on the board’s 21st century learning committee.
“This is an opportunity for St. Anthony Junior-Senior High School to grow and sustain financial security,” Nobriga Kim said about the new governance plans.
“The head of school must be a visionary,” she said.
She said the governance committee will begin its search for a head of school in Hawaii and, because of St. Anthony’s Marianist roots, within the broader Marianist educational community.
“It would be advantageous to have a local person,” she said, but it is “not a requirement.”
“We want what is best for our school,” she said.
St. Anthony High School, a coed institution with grades seven through 12, is located at St. Anthony Parish in Wailuku. It is a diocesan, rather than parish, school.
Nobriga Kim said that the school’s new governance plan follows the recently-adopted Hawaii Catholic Schools planning document “System for Success,” which encourages marketing strategies that include community partnerships and support from all parishes and vicariates in the diocese.
She said that Maui vicariate’s 10 parishes have begun a monthly second collection “specifically for students desiring a Catholic education.” Besides St. Anthony Junior-Senior High school, the financial aid benefits St. Anthony Grade School and Sacred Hearts Grade School in Lahaina.
Nobriga Kim said that the high school draws students from the outlying communities of Kihei, up-country Maui, and Lahaina, more than 20 miles away.
She said that after Maui’s economy “took a dive” in 2008 and 2009, the enrollment, which the Hawaii Catholic School office listed as 325 in 2006, dropped by more than half. It has been inching its way upward for the past few years. Last fall, the school opened with 155 students, up from a low of 137 the previous year.
According to a school news release, this year’s 21 graduates, all of whom are headed for college, earned a collective $2.2 million in scholarships, an average of more than $104,761 each.
“I feel that as Catholics we don’t toot our own horn enough,” Nobriga Kim said. “We are changing that.”
St. Anthony High School has graduated more than 15,000 students in its nearly 160 years of existence. The school is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, Western Catholic Education Association and the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools.
Registration for school year 2013-2014 is ongoing. Call 244-4190 or visit www.sasmaui.org. For more information about the head of school position, contact Catherine Nobriga Kim at 442-3403 or sajshsboard@yahoo.com.
