A strong Catholic identity, unity, and academic excellence are emphasized in a new brand identity for schools that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is launching during Catholic Schools Week.
Celebrated nationally Jan. 29-Feb. 4, the week is a special time for recognizing Catholic education’s contributions to student, parish and community development.
Adding to the excitement this year is a new, overarching brand for all 91 Catholic schools in the archdiocese — preschool through high school. Designed through the Office for the Mission of Catholic Education, the strategy also retains existing, individual brand identities for each school.
A new logo is the effort’s centerpiece.
Inspired by art depicting Mary, Seat of Wisdom, the logo includes a stylized image of Mary and the child Jesus to “represent parents, teachers, children, care and life,” OMCE officials said. An open book symbolizes academic efforts in schools, and the text “Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis” accompanies the image.
OMCE officials hope a “Forming our Future, Educating for Life” tagline will support a common, consistent vision for quality Catholic education in Minnesota. A new Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis website is slated to launch this spring.
Additionally, OMCE wants the brand to inspire people to learn more about Catholic education, including parents and guardians of school-age children.
Jason Slattery, director of Catholic education for the archdiocese, said OMCE wants to showcase the “strong system” of Catholic schools in the archdiocese, using the new brand identity to “elevate and promote” the work that those schools are doing.
“Our goals for the brand are to help uphold the integrity of our system, align expectations for what it means to be a Catholic school, and provide consistency in marketing and communications,” Slattery said in a statement. “Really, the branding effort will reach every area of our work, which also includes advocating for Catholic education at the state level and attracting and retaining top talent for our Catholic schools.” (See Catholic school leadership initiative)
In a letter to families about the effort, Archbishop Bernard Hebda highlights the importance of Catholic education as a way for students to foster “their intellect, leadership, service, and love of God and neighbor.”
Kelby Woodard — headmaster of St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights and a member of OMCE’s branding committee — said the new brand is an opportunity for Catholic educators and families alike to be reminded of that larger mission.
“This is really an effort to bring us together under that common banner of Catholic education in the archdiocese,” said Woodard, a member of St. Peter in Mendota Heights. Families will now see more consistency within the archdiocese, “to see all these different schools and understand what all these schools have in common, and then to be able to do a deep dive into how each individual school lives out that mission.”
The branding effort stems from OMCE’s Roadmap for Excellence in Catholic Education. Announced in January 2019, the Roadmap was established to help Catholic schools in the archdiocese grow in governance, leadership development, curriculum and assessments, access and sustainability and mission schools. As Emily Dahdah — director of the archdiocese’s Department of Educational Quality and Excellence — describes it, the Roadmap “is helping ensure our Catholic schools give the best of our educational tradition in order to draw out the best in every child. This effort is successful because of our partnership with pastors, school leaders, and community partners.”
Slattery views the new brand as helping “position the archdiocese as the central, public-facing voice of our system, which serves more than 31,000 students,” to “help advance (Archbishop Hebda’s) vision alongside school and Church leaders.”
Woodard said he views this new identity as “the branding component of the Roadmap.” It will offer people invested in Catholic education a better sense of “exactly what we plan to do with Catholic education in the archdiocese.”
How does one measure the success of that effort? Slattery said “the goals of the brand are multifaceted, (and) measuring its success will be, too. Of course, we rely on our partnerships with school leaders to help inform and advance our work, and we’ll get their feedback on the branding initiative and set goals for school engagement. For example, we’ve created toolkits for schools that contain co-branding messages, logos, graphics and more. Once we dive deeper into our strategic priorities, we’ll gauge success through analytics and other relevant metrics.”
Slattery also said he hopes to see the Catholic community at large engage with the brand on social media and share their prayers as well as their own Catholic school stories.
Aaron Anthony Benner — dean of students at Hill-Murray School in Maplewood — said his involvement on the branding committee started with conversations he had with Dahdah, one of his master’s program professors.
“I just thought it was a great opportunity and I took it as a sign for something that I should do,” Benner said. When asked for his ideas on how to improve the brand identity, he said, “Yeah, I have a lot of opinions and here’s a chance to share them.”
Benner — a member of St. Peter in North St. Paul — said what he most hopes to see come out of the new brand is “a resurgence of young people wanting to go to church and to experience the faith. Our faith is so rich, and we have a rich history. And I want to see youth saying, ‘This is the faith I want to belong to … I want to go to church every Sunday.’”
He said he also hopes “the rebranding will be inclusive and that they (students) truly believe the word ‘catholic’ is universal, and that includes Irish, Spanish, African, Asian. I hope the rebranding can let people know that this is our faith, and our faith is everybody, includes everybody.”
Slattery agrees. “Catholic education is a great gift that should be available to all who desire it. And so we hope the new Catholic schools brand will boost efforts to attract new families from all backgrounds to see and experience the value of Catholic education.”
Woodard said he views a family choosing Catholic education for their children as the biggest success, one that he hopes the new brand identity will promote.
“This branding effort makes it very clear that there’s a big pie here,” Woodard said. “It’s not a limited pie and it can be sliced up many different ways.”
In his letter to families, Archbishop Hebda said the efforts of dedicated faculty, staff and families have led to Catholic school enrollment increasing over the past three years; OMCE reports there has been K-12 enrollment growth of 9% during that time.
Woodard said he can attest to the enrollment increases at St. Thomas Academy, where 45 new students have joined the school in the past three years. Woodard said one key to the increase is the support Catholic schools offered to students during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also cited efforts to “focus in on what makes us who we are (at St. Thomas Academy)” as being among the reasons for the enrollment increase.
Benner said enrollment has increased at Hill-Murray as well, with “a significant increase every year” during the past two years he’s been dean of students.
With growth in mind, Archbishop Hebda, in his letter to families, said he prays that more families come to know the foundational gift of Catholic education.
Slattery echoed that sentiment, saying “This is an exciting time in our archdiocese, and we’re now able to unify and strengthen our 91 Catholic schools with a new brand. OMCE’s work is guided by Archbishop Hebda’s vision for Catholic education, which is an essential ministry of the Church.”
STRONG SCHOOLSThe brand identity is being introduced during a time of significant accomplishments for Catholic schools in the archdiocese. Some updates that will be included in OMCE’s annual report when it is published during Catholic Schools Week, plus remarks from Emily Dahdah, director of the archdiocese’s Department of Educational Quality and Excellence:
Families are joining parishes through Catholic schools
Roughly 200 families — more than 400 people — at 53 schools within the archdiocese have joined the Catholic Church through their schools. “The Holy Spirit is at work in our schools,” Dahdah said.
Enrollment is up
There has been a 9% K-12 enrollment increase over the past three years; specifically, a 4.4% increase in 2020, a 3.5% increase in 2021, and a 1% increase in 2022.
For the 2022-23 school year, 79% (1,268) of current kindergarteners attended preschool at their Catholic school last year. Meanwhile, the report states, 69% of 2022-23 Catholic high school freshmen came from a Catholic grade school.
“When our Catholic schools grow, so does our opportunity to evangelize, to invite students to embrace the greatest adventure of their lives by living in a close relationship with the God who loves us,” Dahdah. “Students are responding to this extraordinary invitation.”
Student and teacher retention is steady
“Families in our Catholic schools find the trusted educational partner they have been searching for,” Dahdah said. The annual OMCE report indicates that currently, there is a 90% student retention rate at Catholic grade schools and high schools within the archdiocese. Additionally, 84% of new students for the 2021-22 school year re-enrolled for the 2022-23 year.
According to OMCE, Catholic schools within the archdiocese (a 12-county metro area) retained 87% of its teachers, reporting only a 13% turnover rate, during the 2021-22 school year.
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