The District Assembly on Mission:
“Creativity, Courage, and Risk-Taking.”

“We are gathered here over the next few days to listen, to reflect, to discuss, and finally to decide… Guided by the Holy Spirit, I’m confident that we can discern the major roads that we, to whom the Lasallian educational mission is entrusted in this District of San Francisco, need to travel for the next for years.”

With that exhortation, the Visitor of the District of San Francisco, Brother Stanislaus Campbell, FSC, opened the District’s 2006 Assembly on Mission, an assembly made up of delegates from throughout the District, some forty Christian Brothers and about a hundred Partners. Hosted by Saint Mary’s College of California on its beautiful Moraga campus, the delegates spent July 30 through August 4 reflecting on the past and planning for the future.

This quadrennial assembly was inaugurated in 2002, as the District’s response to the 43rd General Chapter’s directive that in every District “the Brothers and their Associates create a structure, where it does not exist, or improve a structure responsible for the Lasallian educational mission, in which all participate with a deliberative vote.”

Out of that first District Assembly on Mission emerged priorities which were approved by the District Chapter and became part of the District’s Action Plan for 2003 – 2007. Priorities for 2003 – 2007 included creating new schools for the poor and making existing schools more accessible to the poor; prioritizing formation activities; developing an evaluation of the Catholic, Lasallian character of schools and works; and creating more intentional connections among schools of the District and between the District and other Lasallians both regionally and internationally. As an aid in their deliberations, delegates to the 2006 District Assembly were provided with a document titled “Response to the 2003-2007 Action Plan” giving detailed reports on what the District has done.

For the first three days of the Assembly, delegates were in “education mode” before turning, in the last two days, to “priority-setting mode.” On each of the first three mornings, delegates heard keynote addresses. The first day's keynote addresses on "Whom We Serve and How We Serve" were by Catherine Karrels, president of De Marillac Academy, San Francisco, and Brother John Montgomery, principal of Cathedral High School in Los Angeles; the second day’s keynote on “Association, Formation, and Vocation” was delivered by a three-delegate panel: Cecilia Powers, teacher at Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento; David Holquin, teacher at Justin-Siena High School in Napa; and Brother Kevin Slate, FSC, director of De La Salle House in Berkeley. The third day’s keynote, on “Financial and Organizational Structures,” was given by Brother Kevin Dalmasse, FSC, of the Regional Office of Education.

A key feature of the first three days was the breakout sessions, thirty different presentations, each of which served to sharpen the focus on some aspect of the educational mission. Most of them were given to delegates by fellow delegates, and delegates commented on the evident high level of skill and knowledge available as a resource in the District.

Guest presenters who were not delegates also made important contributions. These included Brother Ed Siderewicz, FSC, of San Miguel Schools, Chicago, who facilitated two breakout sessions, one on “Seamless Lasallian Education: Cooperative Efforts” and one on “New Economic Models for Funding the Schools”; Professor Robert Bulman of the Saint Mary’s College’ sociology department, who helped facilitate a breakout session on “School Choice and the Lasallian Mission”; and Ken Johnson-Mondragon, Director of Research and Publications at Instituto Fe y Vida, who presented “Changing Ethnic, Catholic Demographics in the West.”

As delegates turned to priority-setting mode, sharing and revising their priorities in the course of a day and half of small-group meetings and plenary sessions, a major theme that emerged was need for greater connectivity among works of the District., in part to share best practices and to offer mutual support, and in part to affirm and enhance our identity not simply as individual schools but as a true system of education. Fundraising and development were at the forefront of expressed concerns, and school officers reported that major donors are more likely to consider requests from educational systems than from individual schools acting alone.

Stabilizing and sustaining our most recent works serving poorer students and continuing to increase the accessibility of established works to poorer students were major concerns. In that same vein, delegates also approved as a priority that the District in considering new educational ventures should investigate in detail the possibilities of securing available public funding and should be alert to possibilities such as public-private partnerships, charter schools, or other forms of family choice. Also high on the list of priorities were exploring greater collaboration with Regional and International works while maintaining as a constant the growth and stability of District works. Delegates also favored extending the evaluation of our Catholic, Lasallian character beyond the secondary schools to the other works of the District.

Priorities identified by the District Assembly will be submitted to the District Chapter, meeting in the fall and winter of 2006. Thereafter, the District Leadership and the District Mission Council will craft a new District Action Plan for 2007 – 2011.

Reflecting on the recent past during his keynote address, Brother Kevin Dalmasse, FSC, commended the District of San Francisco for having excellent leadership on District and local levels, for offering outstanding opportunities for networking and formation, and for having the “holy audacity” to continue to sponsor new schools and answer to new needs.

Brother Stanislaus Campbell, FSC, also reflected positively on the District’s accomplishments. Looking to the future, he named the following as major challenges: “the perennial challenge” of funding; the need to nurture new leadership for schools and other educational works, the work of hiring and forming excellent committed teachers, the task of integrating District planning with emerging Regional planning, and the need to understand and answer the need of the growing population of Latinos in the western United States for “a human and Christian education.” Brother Stan also declared that “perhaps the most important challenge facing us is the appropriation, in some form, of a robust Catholic, Lasallian spirituality that will truly inspire the conduct of our educational mission and sustain us in it not only when we experience success but especially when we encounter difficulties and undergo disasters.”

The challenges and the difficulties are evident. But as Brother Stan, said, “Creativity, courage, and risk-taking are part of our Lasallian heritage.”

Complete information on the District of San Francisco’s Assembly on Mission 2006, including the keynote presentations and the Priority Statements, will be forthcoming on this Web site.