The St. Anthony's Miracle

Written by: Eric Prister

Amazing people all over the country are changing the lives of students in Catholic schools every day. Teachers, administrators, parents, and supporters of Catholic schools work tirelessly to provide every child a quality education. While it’s not possible to tell every story, and give every person the recognition he or she deserves, the 20 Catholic School Stories You Should Know series will help tell some of the best, most heartwarming, most life-changing stories about simple people doing extraordinary things for the cause of Catholic education.

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At the end of the 90s, Milwaukee Catholic schools were struggling. Attendance was down, and schools were on the verge of closing. One of the schools, St. Anthony’s on the south side of Milwaukee, had an enrollment of fewer than 300 students and was in dire straights.

In an attempt to save the school, St. Anthony’s joined the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program—a program developed after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing low-income families to use public funds at religious institutions—and began accepting students as part of the voucher program.

Enrollment at St. Anthony’s shot through the roof. Terry Brown, who started as a volunteer at the school, was named President in 2004 as the school enrollment continued to rise—two hundred voucher students in 1998; three hundred and fifty students in 2002; eight hundred in 2005. The school installed trailers on site to create enough space for the students, and then began buying property in the neighborhood for more buildings. (“Changes at St. Anthony’s makes it a school to watch,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinal).

Today, the school’s enrollment exceeds 1,600 students and serves students from three years old to high school. The largest Catholic school in the United States, St. Anthony’s houses students in five buildings in the Mitchell Street neighborhood in Milwaukee, led by President Zeus Rodriguez and principals Ramon Cruz and Julia D’Amato.

St. Anthony’s increased enrollment is remarkable in itself—increasing the enrollment fivefold when Catholic schools in the area were becoming endangered, if not on the verge of extinction—but becoming a quality school is an equally colossal task.

St. Anthony’s model is “One Team. One Family,” and this model has helped St. Anthony’s reach the level at which it stands today. The school returned to traditional teaching practices and emphasizes discipline, subscribing to the idea that if students remain focused, they can achieve academic excellence. Teachers at St. Anthony’s can command silence from their students, even in the large groups that are the norm at a school of more than 1,600 students, in nearly an instant, a sign of the discipline St. Anthony’s fosters.

The St. Anthony’s “team” and “family” isn’t only comprised of students and faculty—parents and community members are just as integral to the creation of a high quality Catholic school. The rise in enrollment was joined by a rise in Catholic families in the neighborhood; whole families entered the church as their children started attending St. Anthony’s school. The school made a conscious effort to engage the parents of its new students so that they could be intimately involved in the education, providing translators for non-English speaking parents for conferences and on-site translators to make communication as easy as possible.

Miracles do happen, and St. Anthony’s is the perfect example of one of those miracles. St. Anthony’s success could not have been achieved without the help of the voucher programs in Wisconsin, but that success was solidified by a plan to make sure that those students received the best possible educational opportunities

St. Anthony’s mission statement claims to “prepare scholars for college and beyond through highly structured and rigorous academic programs as well as the continued formation of the Faith, igniting strong, successful, Catholic leaders.” Each and every day that they continue to strive toward that mission increases the greatness of the St. Anthony’s miracle.