Adding to a 40-year tradition, two archdiocesan schools receive Blue Ribbon honor

Members of the community of St. Charles Borromeo School in Bloomington celebrate on Sept. 19 the U.S. Department of Education naming it a 2023 Blue Ribbon School. Father Thomas Kovatch, pastor of St. Charle Borromeo Parish, left, joins Victoria Arther, principal, Amy Terry, assistant principal, and pre-kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Wilson. Pre-kindergarten students Thomas Bowling, left, Nazeli Kassamanian, Jack Becker (partially obscured), Melanie Levis and Layla Messel join in the celebration. (Submitted photo)

By Sean Gallagher

When Angela Santarossa saw her second graders at St. Charles Borromeo School in Bloomington celebrate the great news for their community on Sept. 19, she had been in their shoes.

They were rejoicing the announcement that day that the federal Department of Education had named St. Charles a 2023 Blue Ribbon School—something that Santarossa experienced as an eighth-grader there in 2001.

The excellent faith-based education that Santarossa received at St. Charles helped inspire her to become a teacher and continue the tradition of academic excellence of her alma mater.

“Being here to receive the Blue Ribbon award a second time was exhilarating,” she said. “I now know what dedication and commitment it took for the educators to receive the award in 2001.

“Attending St. Charles as a student laid the foundation for not only my career but my faith and the focus and structure of my family. I fell in love with school in these halls.”

Students at Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis also cheered on Sept. 19 when it, too, was named a Blue Ribbon School.

Only 11 schools in Indiana received the recognition, with only three private schools among them.

With St. Charles and Bishop Chatard receiving the recognition this year, schools in the archdiocese have now received 39 Blue Ribbon honors since the program was started in 1982.

Blue Ribbon schools are recognized for their academic excellence. To receive the honor, they have to be nominated by their state’s secretary of education and pass through a rigorous application process.

“We are extremely excited for the St. Charles Borromeo and Bishop Chatard school communities for being honored among highest-performing schools in the country,” said Brian Disney, superintendent of schools in the archdiocese. “In addition to academic excellence, both schools are committed to teaching and living their Catholic faith every day.”

‘An amazing acknowledgement’

The sign board of Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis shares the good news that the U.S. Department of Education named it a 2023 Blue Ribbon School. (Submitted photo)

Bill Sahm has served as president of Bishop Chatard since 2007 and has been affiliated with the school in other ways since the early 1990s. So, even though this was the first time that the Catholic high school on the north side of Indianapolis was named a Blue Ribbon School, he had known well its excellence for a long time.

“So many great educators, quality students, faculty and staff have worked so hard over the years, generation after generation,” Sahm said, “all for the same mission that we have today: to form students for a lifetime commitment to faith, learning, leadership and service.”

John Hasty, Bishop Chatard’s current principal, is only in his second year in leading the school. But in that short time, he’s seen many people make hidden sacrifices to make Bishop Chatard great.

The Blue Ribbon honor, Hasty said, is “an amazing acknowledgement of the selflessness and commitment that so many people here have made to something far greater than themselves—teachers, parents, students, staff across the board. It affirmed what I already knew was happening that makes this place special.”

Sahm said the Catholic foundation of the education offered at Bishop Chatard motivates all in its community to achieve the excellence recognized in the Blue Ribbon honor.

“That’s not intuitive to many people, though,” Sahm reflected. “It’s almost like it gets in the way for them. You’ve got to schedule theology classes, take time for Mass, take time for retreats. Worldly reason would say that taking kids away from academics makes what we achieve with our students here even more challenging.

“Yet, it’s really the other way around. With our faith component being a part of everything we do, the students understand that their lives have meaning. There’s a purpose, a call. That’s what drives the teachers and the administrators.”

In addition to praising Bishop Chatard’s faculty and staff for its Blue Ribbon recognition, Hasty was quick to acknowledge the parents who, in enrolling their children there, enter into a partnership with the school.

“Our parents are invested in that partnership,” Hasty said. “They’re invested in our kids-first teachers. They share with us their responsibility of human, spiritual and academic formation of their children. That’s a lot. I’ve been blown away by the amount of trust and support in that partnership. It’s a powerful community.”

And it’s a community that, while grateful for being named a Blue Ribbon School, is not sitting on its laurels.

“We’ve been motivated for decades without that [honor],” Sahm said. “We don’t want this to be a distraction. We don’t want to take our focus off of what’s really important. I don’t think that will happen. We have too many people committed to the right things.”

‘St. Charles is a family’

Victoria Arther, St. Charles’ principal, was glad to see her students celebrate the Blue Ribbon announcement on Sept. 19.

“We called an all-school recess, which they were super thrilled about,” said Arther. “We had popsicles and balloons waiting. So, they got to celebrate a little.”

That celebration was a way to honor the sacrifices that St. Charles’ students, teachers and administrators made in the fall of 2020 when, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, it re-opened its doors when surrounding public schools remained closed.

“We kept on going as usual and did not see a learning loss,” Arther said. “Our kids kept pressing forward and did a great job. … It’s why we were able to get this Blue Ribbon recognition.

“Our teachers worked really hard during those couple of years when online learning might have been easier for them. We just felt that, for the benefit of our kids, we needed to be here and keep learning together.”

But Arther also knows that the foundation for academic excellence at St. Charles was laid long before the pandemic.

She became a middle school math teacher there in 2008 and served as an assistant principal for four years before becoming the school’s principal this year.

“We do well, year in and year out,” Arther said. “Even before being a Blue Ribbon School, we knew that we had something really special here at St. Charles. This is now going to allow us to really highlight that with others. It’s a distinct honor to be a Blue Ribbon School.”

Santarossa has added motivation to keep the tradition of academic excellence strong at St. Charles because her own children are now students there.

“I knew that I wanted to return to St. Charles as an educator,” she said. “But I had no idea that upon my return I would also be a mother. Bringing my own children to St. Charles has been a full-circle experience for our family.

St. Charles is my ‘forever’ home as a student, teacher and mother.”

Like Santarossa, Amy Miller, St. Charles’ first-grade teacher, had been a student there, graduating from the eighth grade in 2000, a year before it was named a Blue Ribbon School for the first time.

“It is a very exciting time to be at St. Charles,” Miller said. “We are honored to have this award again. Now as a teacher, I know the work that goes into creating this type of learning environment for our students.”

And like Santarossa, family is for Miller an important part of what makes St. Charles great.

“St. Charles is a family,” Miller said. “All of my siblings and I spent all our [kindergarten through eighth-grade] years here. We have great shared memories of teachers, books, festivals, concerts and so much more. Some of my closest friends still today are friends that I met at St. Charles. It is a place where you can make strong connections for life.”

For Miller, a big part of the St. Charles family are the teachers she had when she was a student there.

“When I decided to become a teacher, I did think about the impact that former teachers had on me, especially from my elementary and middle school years,” she recalled. “I came back to

St. Charles to teach and was able to then work with some of those same teachers. They became mentors and friends as I navigated becoming a teacher.” †