More than a mascot: Community reacts to consolidation of two rural Catholic schools

Sarah Czarnick sits at a table in one of four businesses her family runs. This particular business is an event space, and she just arrived from her job as a veterinarian. She has five children who attend St. Francis in Humphrey, Nebraska.

“My husband worked here in Humphrey. I worked in Madison, and we would drive the 17-plus miles here every day for school,” she said.

After a pause, Czarnick continued with tears in her eyes. Her son, Tucker, got her a paper towel to wipe her eyes.

“Just because we believed in the school that much," she said. "Not only the school, but the people.”

The Czarnicks moved to Humphrey from Clarkson because of St. Francis. Now, the school is changing.

The junior and senior high school will merge with another nearby 7-12 school, Lindsay’s Holy Family. Lindsay is about 12 miles away from Humphrey. The new school will be called Archangels Catholic High School, and will reside in what used to be St. Francis.

The archdiocese originally announced last February that Lindsay’s Holy Family and Humphrey’s St. Francis would merge for the 2024-25 school year.

In May, the archdiocese then pushed back implementing the merger to the 2025-26 school year to “allow more time to fully explore and vet all viable options.”

Those options included:

• Merging the two schools at St. Francis and keeping the St. Francis name and branding.
• Merge the two schools and create a new school at St. Francis.
• The two schools combine resources in a way both communities agree with.

The transition team was looking at building a brand new school building on a neutral site, which was why the archdiocese pushed back the timeline.

Then, in December, the archdiocese announced that Humphrey’s St. Francis and Lindsay’s Holy Family would each close to create a new central 7-12 school at the Humphrey site for the 2024-25 school year, which brought the transition timeline back to the original start date.

Riley Johnson, spokesperson for the archdiocese of Omaha, said the merger is due to priest and teacher shortages.

“The struggle of trying to operate two high quality schools and how they would really be competing with each other for a limited and scarce talent pool, and that when you fill teacher vacancies with remote teaching or co-ops at other schools, it diminishes the quality of education," Johnson said. "All of those factors together culminated in Archbishop's decision to merge Holy Family and St. Francis at the current St. Francis site in Humphrey, beginning for the Fall of 24-25.”

Two years ago, there were 111 priests. That number is expected to be 84 by 2032, according to the archdiocese.

Before the consolidation, Lindsay Holy Family and Humphrey St. Francis shared a guidance counselor. Both schools had teacher positions open. Some were covered by other teachers, while other openings were filled with online courses.

In the new consolidated school, most of the positions are filled from St. Francis. Two teachers came over from Holy Family.

The rest of the Holy Family teachers will be working at a new high school called Lindsay Academy. The community didn’t want to lose its high school, so it started its own outside of the archdiocese.

Because of this, no Holy Family students plan to attend the consolidated school.

Jamie Sunderman decided to lead an appeal of the closures to the Vatican.

Sunderman is a 2003 alumni of St. Francis, and has three kids at the school. She pursued the appeal because the new school will be primarily the same students.

“When this news all came out, it just really did not make sense to me,” Sunderman said. “So I just started researching.”

She brought up several concerns with the process - poor communication from the archdiocese, the community’s lack of control over where priests are assigned, no support from the school for students, and that neither community wanted to consolidate.

“We are the people of these communities,” she said. “Our opinions should matter.”

The Vatican responded to Sunderman’s appeal, saying it is still reviewing the case. The Dicastery of Culture & Education will make a decision this fall. The school year starts Wednesday.

The archdiocese responded to the appeal saying: “Recourse is an ordinary part of church administration, and the person who brought it was within her rights to do so. We are confident in all of the pastoral planning work that led to the February 2023 merger decision.”

Kenith Britt released a research study in 2013 on consolidated Catholic schools and what factors helped them work, as well as going through some consolidations on his own. He’s currently the chief operating officer and chancellor at Marian University. Before that, he was president of a school system in Ohio that went through consolidation right before he arrived.

In his research, Britt found that the systems that worked best were having multiple elementary schools feed into a consolidated high school. Some of the benefits were better educational opportunities and financial efficiencies, while some of the challenges were a loss of parish support and identity.

Britt said in order for a consolidation to be successful, the community has to be on board.

“Those communities that have embraced this idea, at least I've seen, have been able to sustain and make sure the Catholic education is available for the families in that community,” Britt said.

Karen Wietfeld is an alumni of St. Francis, has two kids who have graduated from St. Francis, three in high school and one about to start preschool. She said the transition has been a challenge.

“It's really hard to get the kids on board with making these changes that we're being told from the uppers when the staff is the same, the students are the same, the school is the same,” she said.

The Flyers were chosen by the St. Francis class of 1949 in honor of two Humphrey men who died while serving as pilots in World War II. Wietfeld’s son went into the military, so changing to the Defenders and forgetting about what the Flyers represented isn’t OK with her.

The Czarnicks feel the same way. The mascot is a way to honor the veterans in their community. Trevor Czarnick, who is a seventh grader at the school, saw it as a way to recognize his grandpa, who is a veteran.

“I always saw the Flyers name as a kind of Veterans Memorial, so it just seemed really wrong to get rid of it,” Trevor said.

HIs mom remembers watching her father work through trauma after serving in the Vietnam War. The mascot is her way of recognizing him and the

“The least we can do is remember them every single day, and make them proud of what we have done as a community,” Czarnick said. “And taking that away from this community - and I’m not just saying the Catholic community, the community as a whole - is … no better than desecrating a war hero's grave.”

Tucker Czarnick will be a junior. He’s worn the St. Francis Flyers name in several sports – and said it has significant meaning.

“For the Flyers, I had the Flyer name, the Flyer tradition, where the Flyer name came from,” he said. “That's what I was playing for. But now if I go into this next school year, going to be a Defender, Defender of what?”

To the Czarnicks, the Flyers are a part of the community’s identity. But other families view the merger differently.

Duane Kosch, an alumni of St. Francis with four kids currently at the school and one who graduated, supports the merger. He grew up with priests as family friends and would see them at his dining table.

“It pains me that our priests are spread out so thinly," he said. “I mean, it'd be ideal that you'd have a priest teaching your theology classes. We have a Catholic school every 10 miles, it's nearly impossible that they're going to teach anything other than from the pulpit on Sunday.“

Kosch sees the consolidation as a way to invite more families to focus on the Catholic faith.

“Catholic schools, I'm sure you know, get that rap all the time that they kick out good athletes, but are they kicking out disciples of Jesus,” Kosch said. “I think this gives us a chance to restart, and maybe work harder towards that.”

Kosch tells his kids that other schools don’t come to compete against the Flyers. They come to compete against St. Francis.

“The Catholic identity of St. Francis and of Archangels is the identity of our school," he said. "And that was really our push with the kids. It's bigger than a mascot.”

Kosch’s oldest son wasn’t initially excited about the change, but is excited to get back on the football field no matter what name is on the jersey.

Father Stan Schmit is the pastor in charge of the school consolidation. He said change is hard, but this will help create a central spot for Catholic education in that part of the state.

“I mean, once you leave Humphrey, you have Columbus, which has a Catholic high school, Scotus, and Norfolk, which has Norfolk Catholic,” he said. “Other than that there isn't much around.”

The archdiocese allocated $500,000 to help with various transition costs. Schmit said certain aspects will be prioritized, like changing the name on the school building and uniforms for Fall sports. Volleyball and cross country uniforms have arrived, and the school is waiting on the football uniforms. The school also revealed its crest.

The different subcommittees of the transition team are making sure other aspects, like prayer and culture, are ready for students when they step foot on campus. Deana Policky, the 7-12 social sciences teacher, is part of the culture team. She said her team prepared the handbook, and is focused on how to bring students together in their faith.

“The ultimate goal is to have the kids experience their faith in an environment that is designed primarily to help kids grow spiritually,” Policky said.

She said the transition has impacted students differently, so it’s important to respect all those feelings.

“It's kind of like mourning a loss, and maybe over time that will ease up, but for right now, we have to be mindful that there are some people that are really hurting,” Policky said.

And when that first day of school hits, Policky said she is going to support students by keeping them focused on the things they can control, like classes, assignments and their faith.

Schmit wants students to lean into their faith, too. As he walked through the church grounds to the altar, he wanted to emphasize one belief to students.

“With our focus always towards God, we will always find the right path, the right direction, to go,” he said.

That faith in God is a sentiment shared by the community.

Families were asked what they wanted out of the new school. Two themes showed up in many responses: having faith at the center, and finding a way to keep the Flyers tradition alive.