By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Milwaukee — When Catholic elementary school educators were honored at the National Catholic Education Association convention April 17 two Chicago principals walked across the stage.

Rose Mannion, principal of Resurrection Catholic Academy on the Northwest Side, received the Distinguished Principal Award for the Great Lakes Region. Geraldine Maratea, principal of Santa Lucia-Santa Maria Incoronata on the South Side, accepted a “Great Ideas” Grand Award for her school’s annual “Family Night Out” fund raiser.

Each year, the school sponsors a night of dining at a local restaurant—usually one owned by a school family or parishioner. As many families as possible dine there on the designated night.

“The school gets 20 percent of the food sales, the restaurant triples its business for the evening, and the parents enjoy socializing,” Maratea explained.

Mannion, who has served as a principal for 30 years in the same neighborhood, was lauded for, among other things, leading two school communities through a difficult consolidation and for leading a staff that has maintained high test scores in a school where many students’ families do not speak English as a first language.

The awards banquet featured none of the controversy that led the Pittsburgh and Peoria dioceses to boycott the annual convention. Both dioceses objected to the choice of Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, a well-known spiritual writer and lecturer, as a keynote speaker. Many of her works have been critical of church teaching on issues such as women’s ordination and homosexuality.

The dioceses said they would neither use diocesan money to pay for educators to attend the convention, nor award continuing education credit to educators who attended on their own.

Chittister was scheduled to speak April 20, the last day of the convention. Other keynote speakers were Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland and Howard Fuller, an education professor from Marquette University.

An NCEA statement said that “throughout the 98-year history of the convention, various speakers and sessions, have, on occasion, resulted in some lively discussion. As a professional Catholic educational association whose mission is to serve its members, NCEA works diligently to advance the teaching mission of the church.”

The convention’s workshops and symposia included 20 speakers from the Archdiocese of Chicago, according to the NCEA.

In addition to the speakers, the convention had a special symposium on parental school choice, in honor of its host city. Milwaukee has been in the forefront of the move towards greater school choice. The NCEA Partners for Justice Award was presented to leaders of organizations who worked to pass the legislation that created the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

Growing support for parental choice was one of the positive signs that Robert J. Kealey, executive director of NCEA’s department of elementary schools, noted at the awards banquet.

Recent surveys show that 82 percent of people in the United States favor parental choice, Kealey said. The association expects federal legislation allowing for limited school voucher programs to be introduced this year, he said. At the same time, courts have upheld Illinois’ tuition tax credit law.

Contributing: Catholic News Service