St. Pascal Regional Catholic School in St. Paul is joining Ascension Catholic Academy, the ACA announced May 19. The school joins Ascension and St. John Paul II Catholic schools in Minneapolis and St. Peter Claver Catholic School in St. Paul in an elementary school consortium that shares leadership, business and development resources. MARIA WIERING | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

St. Pascal Regional Catholic School in St. Paul was at risk of closure, but school leaders say it’s now positioned for long-term success as it prepares to join Ascension Catholic Academy. 

ACA announced May 19 that St. Pascal would be the fourth school to join the consortium, which began in 2016 and includes Ascension and St. John Paul II Catholic schools in Minneapolis and St. Peter Claver Catholic School in St. Paul. Through the ACA consortium, the elementary schools share centralized leadership, business and development support.  

“To have this support means that we can offer more,” said Inna Collier Paske, St. Pascal’s principal since 2018. “St. Pascal’s future is secured for us to continue to be … a beacon of hope and education for the east side of St. Paul. And we want to be here for a long, long time.” 

Located on the campus of St. Pascal Baylon Catholic Church at White Bear Avenue and East Third Street, St. Pascal school was founded in 1950. It has 134 students in preschool through grade eight, with one classroom per grade. With 68% students of color and 56% of its students the children of immigrants from Central America, Africa and elsewhere, the school reflects the changing demographics of St. Paul’s east side, Collier Paske said. About 71% of St. Pascal’s students are Catholic. 

When Steve Karel joined St. Pascal’s board of directors in 2015, ultimately serving as its chairman at the time, the school was facing financial challenges due to declining enrollment and an increasing gap between what families could pay in tuition and the actual cost of education, he said. The parish’s then-pastor, Father J. Michael Byron, asked him to help the school develop a plan for its long-term viability. With the parish’s changing demographics, Father Byron was uncertain the parish would be in a position to sustain the school for the long term, Karel said. 

Despite that challenge, “the St. Pascal parish and the parishioners have been unbelievably supportive of that school over history,” said Karel, 54, a certified public accountant and parishioner of Assumption in downtown St. Paul. “It had a strong reputation from an academic perspective, and the parish was … very generous, and also parishioners, on their own, had been very generous to us.” 

The school considered a variety of options, Karel said, including partnering with other Catholic schools and becoming a public charter school. The parish was “committed to Catholic education first,” he said. The board decided to transition from a parish school to a regional Catholic school, with the aim of drawing students and support from other east side parishes under a new development plan. That move also reduced St. Pascal Baylon parish’s financial responsibility for the school, as the parish subsidies for the school had waned over the previous years to nothing, Karel said.  

In 2018, Steve Karel’s cousin, Jerry Karel, joined him on the board and now serves as its chairman. A 1972 graduate of St. Pascal, Jerry Karel was tasked with overseeing the school’s transition from a parish school to the regional model. That transition was complete in 2019, and the school weathered the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, it was evident to school leaders and supporters that a more robust plan was needed to ensure its viability.  

“We became a regional school with an updated charter to serve all the families, all the parishes across the east side of St. Paul,” said Jerry Karel, 63, a parishioner of St. Mary of the Lake in White Bear Lake. “We took that responsibility awfully seriously, and we wanted to make sure that we had a foundation for the school that was really going to sustain it into the future. … Every year it’s been a lot of work to balance the budget, and we had been doing that, but we also wanted to make sure that path into the future was sustainable and promising.” 

As the school sought a long-term solution, its leaders collaborated with staff members of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office for the Mission of Catholic Education. Helping St. Pascal overcome financial obstacles was important to the archdiocese’s education leaders, said Yen Fasano, associate director of the Drexel Mission School Initiative in the archdiocese’s Office for the Mission of Catholic Education.  

Last year, St. Pascal joined the Drexel Mission School Initiative, which launched in 2019 to help schools that serve low-income families and require extra financial and business support. All three ACA schools are also among the 10 total Drexel Mission Schools. 

Over recent decades, the closure of other Catholic schools on St. Paul’s east side, including those of the parishes of St. Patrick, St. Casimir, Sacred Heart and Blessed Sacrament, has left St. Pascal the last Catholic school between the State Capitol and St. Paul’s eastern border. Being a Drexel Mission School has helped St. Pascal to partner with foundations committed to Catholic education, such as the Twin Cities-based GHR Foundation, Fasano said.  

“Being the last east side school in St. Paul and with the great academic growth and the excellence that’s been seen there, it was really worth sustaining,” Fasano said of St. Pascal. “Because of the (Drexel) Initiative, it allowed for the archdiocese to really live out its priorities in a well-coordinated way to … bear success, because of … the Church’s commitment to urban education.” 

St. Pascal’s time of need coincided with Ascension Catholic Academy’s interest in expanding, said ACA founding president Patricia Stromen. ACA was founded with the collaboration of its three current schools, making St. Pascal its first new addition. Its board voted in favor of adding St. Pascal May 19. The agreement will be finalized later this summer, Stromen said. 

Combined enrollment for Ascension, St. John Paul II and St. Peter Claver is currently 535 students. 

“We have aligned missions, we have shared values, they have much to bring to the Academy, and the Academy has much to offer St. Pascal’s,” Stromen said. “For us, it’s all about serving scholars and families. It’s about being able to share the blessings and steward the gifts that we’ve been given, to be able to expand to another site and see growth and sustainability.” 

St. Pascal joining the ACA “shows the impact and unity of everyone coming together to help raise St. Pascal to a place of sustainability and academic excellence,” Fasano said. 

In a May 19 statement, Archbishop Hebda said he is “confident that (St. Pascal) will become even stronger next year as it becomes part of Ascension Catholic Academy.” 

“I am grateful to those who have generously stepped forward at this critical moment to facilitate this new collaboration so that St. Pascal could continue the vital mission of partnering with parents in the Catholic education of their children.”                   

Stromen emphasized that despite St. Pascal joining the ACA, the school will retain its own identity. Collier Paske said the school prides itself as a place to “believe, learn, love and connect,” the school’s four pillars established last year. 

“It makes me excited to have a team I can work with, to have a team of principals I can bounce ideas off, and to have the (ACA) president that I can go to, to ask for help,” she said. “I’m very excited about it and seeing all these partnerships come together. I believe in synergy, that if we share what works in our schools, I think we can all benefit from best practices … to get even better and benefit students.” 

St. Pascal joining ACA “just feels right — it is right,” Jerry Karel said. “I think it’s just a great thing for the school. It really allows us to continue on at St. Pascal Regional Catholic School, but also be able to share resources and best practices with other schools that are much like us. And it just makes so much sense that really I could not be more pleased today.”