Catholic School Profile
School expands learning borders
Students taught to make right choices from faith-filled education
By Chris Donahue
Staff Writer
FORDS — At Our Lady of Peace School, combining the traditions of a Catholic education and sound academic training are cornerstones of the 76-year-old facility.
Our Lady of Peace serves 273 children from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade; 85 percent of the enrollment is Catholic. The experience of a Catholic education must be a positive one, according to John Donza, principal. Ninety-eight percent of the students who graduate from Our Lady of Peace School enroll in Catholic high schools.
Our Lady of Peace School was built in 1930 and staffed by the Sisters of Notre Dame deNamur until 1940. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace served the school until 1990.
To meet the demands of a growing parish, a middle school was built one block from the elementary school and opened its doors in 1968. Today, the elementary school serves 173 pre-K to fifth grade children, and the middle school serves 100 children.
According to Donza, the younger children feel comfortable in their surroundings but are ready to make the transition when they reach the sixth grade.
Today, its academic and extracurricular programs include Before Care & After Care; Spanish and computer classes for grades 1-8; art; music; physical education; guidance; library; basketball for grades 5-8, and cheerleading. Donza expects the basketball program to grow next year. The school’s new Fathers’ Club will be sponsoring clinics to teach fundamentals of the game. The school also has a choir and next year will introduce a school band.
Religious education is one of the strengths of the school, and Msgr. Robert J. Zamorski, who was named pastor of Our Lady of Peace Parish in 1986, is very active in the students’ faith formation, Donza said. Children attend Mass at least once a month as well as other liturgical services during the school year. Beginning in September, students will be given tours of the church.
“A lot of times if you ask students, ‘What’s the vestibule? What’s the sanctuary?’ they might not know,” Donza said. “Years ago, when we were in school, we knew that. With Msgr. Zamorski’s help and Deacon Bill (McGann) and the features we have here, they will get that instruction.”
Each spring, a First Friday Mass is held followed by the May crowning, which includes a procession from the church to the statue of Mary outside the middle school.
The procession includes a member of the student council and pre-K and kindergarten children carrying the flowers for the crowning. An honor guard made up of sixth- and seventh-graders assembles near the statue.
Christian values
While financial stability and maintaining enrollment levels are major challenges for every Catholic school, Donza believes the bigger challenge is providing “a strong, faith-based education in a secular, progressive society.”
“In a society where people take no responsibility for their actions and disavow the traditional values of faith and family, we are addressing the problems the best we can by supplying the traditional values and basically helping the kids make the right choices. We can’t make them do anything, but we try to put them on the right path,” he said.
Since his arrival, Donza said he has been amazed by the amount of activities embraced by students to assist the sick and needy. Earlier this year, the students and staff raised money for victims of Hurricane Katrina by filling 200 backpacks with school supplies for children in a Mississippi parish. The store where Our Lady of Peace students buy their school uniforms also sent 150 free of charge.
“It was overwhelming. We asked for a little and we got so much. It’s like that with everything they do,” Donza said.
“We had a Jeans Day for breast cancer awareness and all the money went to cancer research. The seventh graders are raising money for Juvenile Diabetes because we have a child in our school who suffers from it and they need certain medicines. Half of the money will go for research and the other half to the family.”
The eighth grade picks out certain projects during the year, he added. One of them is the Rachel Project, which supports unwed mothers who had their babies instead of aborting them, he said.
In 1995, a spiritual bouquet from the student body was sent to the people of Oklahoma City after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that took 168 lives. More than 6,000 prayers were said on behalf of the victims.
Children also prepared a letter to explain their prayer mission and offer comfort to the families of the disaster victims.
For the past three years, Our Lady of Peace has collaborated with St. James School, Woodbridge, in Hoops for Charity, a basketball tournament to raise money for different charities. The event, which raised more than $7,000 this year, includes a three-point contest, basketball games and a raffle.
The year’s event benefited a family in St. James Parish which is caring for one its members, who is seriously ill, said Kelly Dubasak, a sixth-grade teacher at Our Lady of Peace School.
Fostering compassion
Dubasak, who graduated from Our Lady of Peace in 1979, said the compassion fostered in the school is one reason her two sons are enrolled there; Connor, an eighth grader, who will attend Union Catholic High School next year, and Terrence, a fifth grader.
“I like the feeling of community in the school, the feeling that everybody gets along and anything can get done,” Dubasak said. “The kids really benefit from that. I wouldn’t send my kids here if I didn’t think it was a good school. My parents sent me here and a lot of people from the community come here because it’s a good educational facility.”
The students’ spiritual growth is what separates Our Lady of Peace from public schools, Donza said.
“When people come here it’s not because of our discipline,” he said. “Everybody thinks because we are a Catholic school, we are cut and dried. It’s like the military. No. Nine out of 10 times, and I’m sure the other principals say the same thing, it’s all about what we’re going to give them faith-wise. Public schools can’t compete with that. Keeping our Catholic identity is very important to us.”
Parental involvement
The Home School Association is very active every year sponsoring fundraisers and fun events, said Laura Lindsey, corresponding secretary for the organization. Lindsey’s daughter, Danica, graduated from Our Lady of Peace School and now attends Mother Seton Regional High School, Clark. Her son, Bradford, is a sixth-grader at Our Lady of Peace.
Activities include Tricky Tray; Spring Auction; Mother’s Day Plant Sale; Breakfast with Santa; Race for Education, in which students get sponsors to walk around the block; and several 50-50 raffles, Lindsey said.
One of the highlights of the school year is Trick or Trunk, Donza said. “Instead of having kids going out and trick-or-treating on Halloween, the parents line up their cars in the middle school parking lot, which is rather large, and they open up their trunks and they have all the goodies there,” he explained.
The Father’s Club assisted the HSA in fundraising when it held its first Family Fun Night May 24 in the school gymnasium.
Thinking ahead
Enrollment dropped from 324 students in 2004-05 to 273 in 2005-06. Next year’s projected enrollment is about 275 students, Donza said.
To boost enrollment, Donza plans to increase its exposure through advertising and open houses. “We’ve been very proactive in marketing the school. We’ve advertised in newspapers, dailies and community newspapers; we’ve held open houses, including Sundays. We have fliers in all the pre-schools around here.”
Stressing innovation in curriculum has been another strategy to retain and increase enrollment. He also works with the parish to contact families who had children baptized.
“We got responses and they registered the next year in pre-K and kindergarten,” Donza said. “I tell the HSA all the time and the parents when I see them in the playground, the best advertisement is you. If you say good things about the school while you are shopping, people will come up. We’ve had people say we heard people talking and want to see the school.”
Extending the classroom
Teachers at Our Lady of Peace School are encouraged to seek innovative ways to teach, and art and music teacher Rosie Singalewitch said she has taken advantage of the opportunity.
One of the innovative ways to enhance the students’ art class is to post their work on Artsonia, a children’s online art museum (http://www.artsonia.com/). Singalewitch has posted about 3,500 pieces of art on the Web site the past few years. It allows students and relatives to view their work and if they want, order any of the works affixed to items such as mouse pads, coffee mugs, key chains, T-shirts, mugs and note cards for purchase. The school receives a portion of the profits.
Our Lady of Peace projects on the Web site include: snowflakes, Christmas wrapping paper, Halloween stained glass, woven pouches, illusion weaving and Mexican art called Ojo de Dios (Eyes of God).
To put the art on the Web site, Singalewitch photographs each one, enters them in the computer, edits them, types their names on them, and then uploads them. Each student has a screen name, such as Mark52, and no last names are used to ensure privacy.
Singalewitch also teaches a ceramics club for students. The items they make are fired in her home, where she has a kiln.
“This school is phenomenal in its support of the arts programs. I know in other schools, art gets eliminated if there is a budget crisis. The administration is behind our arts program. The kids know that and thrive in here,” Singalewitch said.
Creative ways to teach also extend to the youngest children at the school. Pre-K teacher Lisa Kelly’s classroom featured a large, enclosed glass case where her nine children can watch how several caterpillars turn into butterflies over the course of about two weeks.
Other projects include making Mother’s Day gifts.
“The staff is very dedicated and there is a real family-atmosphere here,” said Kelly, who has one child attending the school and another entering next year.
Witness to change
Elaine McAndrew, an eighth grade teacher, has taught social studies her entire 36-year career at Our Lady of Peace. In June 1990, McAndrew was one of two teachers at the school along with then-principal Elizabeth Brammer to receive a papal blessing for service to Catholic education.
“I’ve had to change because I can’t teach them the same way when I started,” McAndrew said. “When I started we were very text-book oriented. I lectured and they took notes and now I have to be more ingenious.”
But something that hasn’t changed over the years is a warm bond between teachers and students, McAndrew said. “It has felt like home from the day I walked in. I was embraced by everybody that was here,” she said.
Eighth-grader Angela Parente of Fords has attended Our Lady of Peace since kindergarten and serves as student council treasurer, assistant editor of the yearbook and altar server in Our Lady of Peace Parish.
“The teachers are always very helpful and concerned,” Parente said. “It’s also a small school so it’s very friendly and it makes you feel comfortable.”
Parente, whose brother, Stephen, attends kindergarten at the school, will attend Mother Seton Regional High School in the fall.
Marialaina Nissenbaum, a fourth-grader from Fords, said she enjoys a lot of subjects, especially social studies. “I like my classmates and the teachers are nice,” she said.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law