By Gretchen Keiser

The U.S. Education Department has stepped into the controversy over remedial education in the archdiocese’s Catholic schools, giving the state two weeks to submit a report on the present situation and plans to provide equitable services in the future.

“The statutory requirement that private school children be provided equitable services must be met,” the letter said in part. It was sent in late February by Mary Jean LeTendre, director of Compensatory Education Programs for the U.S. Education Department, to Dr. Charles McDaniel, Georgia superintendent of schools, since he was the chief education officer in the state. A copy of the letter was sent to Sister Joan McCann, O.P. assistant superintendent of Catholic schools.

The report requested by the Education Department asked the state to show “the degree to which the appropriate local education agencies have progressed in designing and implementing equitable Chapter 1 programs for children in religiously affiliated schools in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.”

It specifically asked for the names of schools and numbers of children affected where no remedial education has taken place this year or where the number of children participating is significantly less than last year.

It also asked for the state’s “plan for correcting these situations” where remedial education is not taking place or is seriously reduced.

Ms. LeTendre also asked that local school districts be told to “retain sufficient funds” from federally allotted Chapter 1 monies “to ensure that equitable services to private school children will be provided.”

In the last few weeks, several of the archdiocese’s Catholic schools have been contacted by state representatives gathering information in response to the letter.

Georgia is one of several states where attempts to work out equitable Chapter 1 services have lagged and the federal government has stepped in to try and mediate. Others are California, Minnesota, Nebraska and North Carolina, according to Thomas Fagan, special assistant to Ms. LeTendre.

The situation between the state of Georgia and the archdiocese’s schools was brought to the attention of the Education Department by Richard Duffy, the representative for federal assistance at the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, D.C. Sister McCann had submitted a report to him detailing the status of programs at the seven Catholic elementary schools that had Chapter 1 programs, including a recent Georgia Bulletin article detailing the state’s plans to place St. Anthony’s school children in a vacant, unsecured public school building.

Of the seven schools that had federally funded remedial education programs last year, two currently have no services at all, one hired the former public school teacher who had worked at the Catholic school for many years, and four others had a variety of partial and, in the view of Catholic principals and administrators, inequitable substitutes for a full remedial program.

The upheaval began when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last July that public school teachers providing remedial help in reading and math to students in private religiously affiliated schools, could no longer teach on the premises. However, students in the schools who qualify for remedial help must still be provided the teaching in some other setting.

Schools in the archdiocese that had teachers and aides last year are Christ the King, Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Anthony’s and St. Paul of the Cross in Atlanta, Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Thomas More in Decatur and St. Joseph’s in Athens. Neither St. Joseph’s nor Christ the King has any remedial education program in place this year. St. Thomas More hired the public school teacher who had worked there in the past.

St. Anthony’s had no program until February when the idea of using the vacant Peeples Street school for the remedial classes surfaced. Our Lady of Lourdes has had programs intermittently and Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Paul of the Cross have students attending special classes in public schools either early in the morning or after the normal school day ends. Some students have dropped out of the programs because of the added time or difficulties with transportation.

Whatever has been in place has been accomplished through months of negotiations and difficulties, Sister McCann said. “From the first of September on, we worked on negotiations with the city of Atlanta for St. Paul of the Cross, Christ the King, Lourdes and St. Anthony’s.”

Asked about her reaction to the Education Department stepping in she said, “I’m happy that somebody is finally bringing these people to some kind of accountability. It didn’t seem as if we could.”

“I truly believe the federal government is trying to make the best of a situation that wasn’t their doing either,” she added.

While the Education Department letter was sent to Dr. McDaniel as the state’s chief school officer, it is the specific public school district within which the Catholic school is located that was involved in the negotiations. Dr. McDaniel died last week at his office at the age of 63.

When the report has been submitted to the Education Department, the federal government will review the findings and give a report to Sister McCann, according to Thomas Fagan, and obtain a response from the archdiocese.

“Generally what you have is a dispute,” Fagan said, “with the private school saying either nothing has been offered or what has been offered is not equitable and the public schools saying that what they have offered has been turned down.”

“It becomes our job to ferret between those two conclusions and come to a resolution,” he said.

In some states, this has led to the Education Department representative visiting the state in person and sitting down with the parties in the dispute. Sometimes it is less serious. “Sometimes communication breaks down and we can just help with that,” he said.

Several principals said that either they had been contacted since the Education Department letter went out or that their Chapter 1 teachers had been contacted to provide information for the state’s response.

Sister Marita Regina O’Connor, I.H.M., principal of Sts. Peter and Paul in Decatur, said that she had been contacted by the DeKalb County Chapter 1 representative for the first time in several months. Since the fall, approximately 25 children from the Catholic school have been attending 7:15 a.m. remedial math classes at Tilson elementary School nearby.

For this school, the good news is that there is some program in operation and that Tilson Elementary School is only a block and a half away from the Catholic school.

However, the 25 children involved are only about a third of the 75 or so students who received remedial help last year. There is no remedial help in reading at all, leading some children to be left without the help they need this year. Other children are unable, because of family transportation problems, to make the early morning class, Sister O’Connor said. The representative recently called “concerned about the other almost 50 children. He has never mentioned them before,” Sister O’Connor said.

Discussions are now underway that may lead to the other children who cannot attend the early morning class being bused to and from the Tilson Elementary School at a scheduled time during the school day, Sister O’Connor said.

However, she also noted that the Catholic school is budgeting for its own remedial math and reading teacher next year. While 25 children are receiving help in math at the public school, she said the full remedial program is “too important” to be left piecemeal.

“Here we are in March already,” she said, “with nothing in reading, nothing at all.”

Sister Anna Kearns, C.S.J., principal at Our Lady of Lourdes, said that it appeared a functioning program had finally been established there in February. The Atlanta city schools office is renting a house from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change that had been used for the center’s literacy program.

A teacher and aide are working with approximately 74 students in remedial reading and math, Sister Kearns said. This is about the same number of Chapter 1 students as were served last year.

Last fall the school had a functioning program for about a month, but it was disrupted when the space being rented at the King Center was needed for the Martin Luther King birthday celebrations. The class stopped until February.

Now, although she is pleased with the new location and its ready access to the school, Sister Kearns worries “if this is going to continue or is it just till the end of the year and then we’ll have to start this all over again?”

In Clarke County, where there has been no program all year, Sister Noreen Friel, I.H.M., principal of St. Joseph’s school, says she has not been contacted by anyone from the state as yet.