On Sisters, Systems, and Staffing Catholic Schools for the Future

When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, I was in eighth grade at St. Gregory Catholic School in Phoenix. My classmates and I gathered around the Smartboard to watch white smoke rise from the chimney in Vatican City. I didn’t fully grasp the implications of a Jesuit pope from Latin America or why he chose the name Francis, but I knew it marked a new chapter for the Church.

At St. Gregory, I was lucky—statistically and personally—to have been taught by women religious: Dominican Sisters and Sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM). Some wore habits. Others didn’t. But all of them shaped me. They taught me how to learn, how to pray, and how to live with purpose.

More than a decade later, I’m a research professor studying how schools organize their workforce. I’ve taught in Catholic schools myself. And as the Church prepares for Pope Leo’s leadership, I find myself reflecting not just on the papacy, but on what Catholic schools need to become to sustain their mission into the future, especially in light of enrollment declines, school closures, and tight budgets.

A System Built on a Workforce That No Longer Exists

In 1965, 60% of Catholic school teachers were religious sisters. These educators lived communally, received modest compensation, and collectively supported a school system that was academically strong and financially accessible to working-class families.

But over the decades, that workforce has nearly vanished. Following broader societal shifts in the 1960s and 1970s—including expanded career opportunities for women, changing expectations around religious life, and declining vocations—the number of sisters in schools began to drop sharply. Today, fewer than 4% of Catholic school educators are women religious, and most schools operate without any on staff.

"Sister teaching a class in the 1960's" by St. Mary's O'Neill is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The transition to lay educators brought new expertise, broader representation, and professional diversity. But it also highlighted a structural gap: the system had long depended on a workforce that no longer existed. Lay teachers typically enter classrooms with different preparation, compensation expectations, and responsibilities outside of school. Many are early-career professionals or career changers without access to consistent mentorship or support.

Yet despite these shifts, many Catholic schools continue to operate with the same staffing structure: one adult responsible for all aspects of instruction, student support, and school engagement. What was once sustained by a larger, shared model of leadership is now expected of individuals working largely alone.

In a landscape of shifting enrollment and evolving expectations, Catholic schools will need not only new tools, but new ways of organizing the people who use them.

Addressing these challenges won’t happen through nostalgia or incremental change. Catholic school leaders, educators, and their partners can begin now by asking: How can we better organize the people already in our schools? How might we grow new educators from our communities and university partners? And how do we adapt instructional roles to meet new realities without compromising identity? 

These questions move beyond merely how to adequately staff Catholic schools toward thinking about how the Catholic School Educator Workforce is designed. The answers will differ from school-to-school and Diocese-to-Diocese, but one thing is for certain: they will require bold decisions about structure, formation, and support.

1. Organize Around Teams

The one-teacher model is outdated and unsustainable, but remains the norm in many Catholic schools. It asks one educator to manage instruction, differentiation, faith formation, behavior support, communication with families, and more. For many teachers, this model is isolating, and increasingly unrealistic.

Teams multiply impact. Team-based staffing offers a more sustainable approach. Grade-band teams (such as K–2 or 3–5) can share planning, divide responsibilities, and flexibly regroup students based on needs. But the greatest impact of teams is rooted in care for the whole person. 

Teams can strengthen cura personalis—the care of the whole person—by bringing multiple perspectives to a student’s academic, emotional, and spiritual development. One teacher might notice a reading struggle. Another might pick up on anxiety at recess. Another may see a deepening prayer life. Together, they form a fuller picture of the child and respond with intention.

Flexible staffing allows smarter spending. In an era of enrollment uncertainty and constrained budgets, team structures help Catholic schools think more creatively about how they allocate resources. Rather than defaulting to one full-time teacher per grade level, schools can reallocate a single salary line more strategically. One option: offer a stipend to a lead teacher while also hiring a returning part-time educator and an instructional aide or teacher candidate. (Of course, this kind of layered staffing requires strong partnerships with local colleges and universities—more on that in the next section.)

These roles aren’t substitutes for certified teachers—they extend their reach. In elementary settings, this often means thinking beyond rigid grade levels and embracing multi-age groupings or shared teaching responsibilities across a grade band. In high schools, it could mean organizing around grade-level or house teams, anchored by a common theology course or annual capstone experience, with a lead teacher coordinating interdisciplinary planning, mentoring newer educators, and helping guide student formation across subject areas.

2. Internal Pathways and Community Partnerships

Catholic schools can’t rely on job postings alone to staff their future. They need to grow the next generation of educators from within. Instructional aides, extended day workers, and support staff often have strong relationships with students and a deep connection to the school’s mission. 

With the right structures—tuition support, modular coursework, on-the-job training, and mission formation—these individuals can be supported to become full-time educators.

Reach students early through teacher academies. Catholic high schools can build “teacher academy” programs where students explore education as a calling and intern in local Catholic elementary schools. These programs offer early exposure to both the joys and challenges of teaching and help students discern whether education might be part of their future. If nothing else, they cultivate a deeper appreciation for education and for the teachers who shaped them.

Build pathways through university partnerships. Many Catholic school educators, including support staff, enter classrooms without formal preparation. Catholic schools can partner with local colleges and universities to create credentialing pathways that include modular coursework and on-the-job coaching. These partnerships should also include intentional strategies for helping instructional aides and other support staff become certified educators, with flexible, work-embedded programs designed for working adults. At the same time, Catholic schools should proactively offer themselves as student teaching sites, providing future educators with hands-on experience and creating a powerful recruitment pipeline, especially at a time when Catholic schools must compete for a shrinking pool of educators.

3. Support Innovative Pedagogy with Teams and Technology

Technology is reshaping what’s possible in classrooms, from AI-powered tutoring and adaptive assessments to digital learning platforms and flipped instruction models. But real transformation comes from how we teach, how students learn, and how people are organized to make that learning possible.

One example of this work is Loyola Marymount University’s iDEAL Institute, whose Academy of Blended Learning supports Catholic schools in using technology to expand instructional possibilities while staying grounded in identity.

But what if Catholic schools didn’t stop there?

Innovative staffing can make the most of technology that unlocks time and flexibility. Once schools adopt blended learning, they can go even further by rethinking how adults are deployed. Technology creates new instructional possibilities—but it’s innovative staffing that supercharges them. When schools reorganize roles around team-based models, they can take full advantage of the flexibility that tools like blended learning provide: grouping and regrouping students, using time differently, and matching educator strengths to student needs in new ways.

Educators no longer have to operate alone. They can form intentional teams that respond more holistically to students’ academic, emotional, and spiritual needs.

Approaching emerging technologies with discernment and purpose. As artificial intelligence and other emerging tools enter the education space, Catholic schools will be called to discern how technology aligns with their mission. How do we uphold human dignity in an increasingly automated world? What must remain deeply relational in a Catholic education? Pope Francis has already encouraged the Church to reflect on these questions, and Pope Leo will take them further in an era defined by rapid technological change.

Catholic schools don’t need to have all the answers now. But they can begin by designing roles that are flexible, sustainable, and aligned with their educational goals so that every tool they adopt serves not just efficiency, but purpose.

Building the Next Chapter of Catholic Education

Catholic education as we know it was shaped by the daily, often unseen (or unacknowledged) labor of religious sisters who taught, led, and lived in service of a larger vision. Rooted in community, shared purpose, and an unwavering commitment to students, their work laid the foundation for generations of Catholic education.

That system was shaped by the realities of its time. Today’s workforce looks different, and so must the structures that support it.

The responsibility now is not to replicate the past, but to honor it. If communities of religious life shaped the past, the future can be shaped by communities of practice. 

The next chapter of Catholic education will be written by the teams we build—the ones grounded in care, clarity, and shared purpose.