By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Hawaii has a brand new Catholic high school, a huge step for its three pioneering students.
Using the service of an internet-based “virtual” Catholic high school in Florida, St. Catherine School on Kauai has extended its grade level from eight to 12, joining the state’s seven other Catholic high schools.
The Florida school, Archdiocese of Miami Virtual Catholic School (ADOM-VCS), provides most of the teachers and classes, delivered online. It has similar arrangements with more than 40 Catholic schools nation-wide, mostly rural institutions without the resources to offer a full-scale advanced curriculum.
Enrollment-wise, the new school is tiny. Educationally, it is blazing a big, new trail. The high school is a first for the Hawaii Catholic school system, using the power and potential of the internet to provide an academically rigorous private Catholic education to students such as those in Kapaa, a community too small to support a traditional secondary school.
Except for a short-lived effort in the 1990s, Kauai had remained the only major Hawaiian Island with no Catholic high school. This did not stop parents from asking for one, said St. Catherine principal Celina Haigh, in particular as an addition to St. Catherine School, one of only two Catholic grade schools on the island.
Various options were explored by both parents and school officials, including the ADOM-VCS program which Hawaii Catholic Schools superintendent Michael Rockers had suggested two years earlier. Everyone’s preference had been a “brick and mortar” institution, but it was never financially feasible.
Additional research on the ADOM-VCS program by St. Catherine School led to a serious proposal sent earlier this year to Bishop Larry Silva, who took only a day to approve it.
“I am really excited” about the new school, Haigh said. “I hope it grows. It is an academically challenging program.”
At St. Catherine, online classes are taught by teachers of the Archdiocese of Miami. The school offers standard and honors-level English, math, science and history, plus 40 electives, several foreign languages, and 14 advanced placement classes.
ADOM-VCS is accredited by AdvancEd, the accreditation commission of the southwestern United States.
The new St. Catherine High School will maintain its Catholic identity and environment, requiring four years of theology and monthly service hours. Students will attend Mass twice a month with the rest of St. Catherine School.
The Archdiocese of Miami Virtual Catholic School will tailor graduation requirements to meet the Hawaii Dept. of Education requirements. Course credits are transferable, and students will earn a fully accredited diploma. ADOM-VCS also has a full time counselor to guide the students with their course choices and college and career planning.
Coach and guide
The director of St. Catherine’s high school division is Maria Ballesteros, a St. Catherine graduate herself with at master of arts degree in human development from Boston College and a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from the University of Hawaii-Manoa. She helped research the choice of the Archdiocese of Miami school.
“Our director is very capable in guiding and coaching her students,” Haigh said. She helps them take responsibility for their learning.
Ballesteros said her primary job is to be “present in the classroom during the school day to provide academic support.”
She is also responsible for maintaining communication with the pastor, principal, school advisory board and parents on Kauai, and with the teachers and administrators in Miami.
She sets up the daily class schedule and helps coordinate enrichment classes and extracurricular activities on the St. Catherine campus.
Ballesteros also applies for grants to support the high school, “since we need to be fully self-sustaining,” she said.
The students come to school daily and do their academic work mainly on computers in a classroom provided by the school.
Ballasteros is with them through the entire school day, from 7:45 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“Instead of learning from a teacher standing up in front of the class,” Ballesteros said, “each student must read the text online and view embedded links to videos, related websites, or an animation, to learn the subject material.”
The teachers give them assignments. Some assignments require them to collaborate with students in the same classroom or “from anywhere in the country taking the same subject.”
The students are also required to discuss their work with the teacher via phone or computer communications as directed. Students learn at their own pace.
The typical daily schedule has six core classes, a couple of breaks, lunch, an afternoon study and discussion period and a final session for extracurricular club activity. Friday is dedicated to Mass, tutoring, and classes in hands-on subjects like music, art, science lab and physical education taught in the traditional way by St. Catherine teachers.
According to ADOM-VCS’s website, it “offers a rigorous full-time and part-time curriculum that emphasizes Catholic principles, and is facilitated by innovative, state-certified teachers.”
Its curriculum, credit-recovery courses and high school diploma are recognized by colleges and universities nationwide, the website states.
The virtual Catholic school is supported by the Archdiocese of Miami and endorsed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
This program is used by some small Catholic schools to offer specialized advanced credited subjects without having to hire an extra teacher locally. The teachers are all certified current or former Catholic school educators in the Archdiocese of Miami.
“Classes taken online allow students anywhere in the world to connect to a teacher anywhere in the world,” Ballesteros said.
“I think this program is a wonderful choice for students in rural areas, such as here on Kauai, who do not have a Catholic choice for high school,” she said.
Six students originally signed up for St. Catherine High School, Haigh said, but three left the program for a variety of reasons. The three remaining students are all freshmen, St. Catherine eighth grade 2016 graduates.
Because of the nature of the school, team athletics cannot be offered, though the principal hopes to explore the possibility of future athletic partnerships with other Kauai private schools, as is done on Oahu.
According to Haigh, the Archdiocese of Miami school charges between $3,000 and $4,000 a student. St. Catherine’s high school tuition is the same as for its grade school, $6,410.
The students speak
“The reason I came here in the beginning was because they took the honors classes out of Kapaa High. I wanted what was best for my education. So for ninth grade I will be here. I feel that I will get a good education here and the courses are online which is new to me but I love to try new things! I can’t wait to see the outcome of this program and I’m sure it will be a good one.” —Lola Buick
“I am delighted to be a part of this venture that St. Catherine School has decided to partake in, as it not only gives parents another place to send their kids, it also allows us to show the world that virtual schools are just as challenging, if not more so, than regular schools. I pray that this high school will succeed, and hope that before long, we may make a name for ourselves as a powerhouse of education.” —Gabriel Ballesteros
