Holy Cross Elementary School

Board members sought for vibrant, thriving Catholic elementary school in the Bronx.

Holy Cross Elementary School, a growing, thriving Catholic School in the Soundview section, is seeking board members to help lead the school to the next level of excellence in education, services to the broader community. Founded in 1922, the school has provided excellence in education for 90 years. The Holy Cross mission is to maximize students’ potential and quality of life by giving them an educational, social, and spiritual foundation.

School

Holy Cross Elementary School educates nearly 400 students in pre-Kindergarten through the 8^th grade with enrollment up 26% from 2010-2011. The school has an annual budget of approximately $1.3 million, and has stable leadership, led by the same principal for the past 12 years.

Approximately 42% of students are Roman Catholic. About 80% are Hispanic, mainly Puerto Rican and Dominican; 15% are West Indian and African American; and 5% are Caucasian.

Among Holy Cross Students, over 90% go on to Catholic High School, and a large majority goes on to college.

Community

In the Soundview community in the South Bronx, approximately half the residents of Soundview live below the poverty line and are receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Home Relief, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income. The neighborhood contains a large number of public housing complexes.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Soundview was adversely impacted by the rise of youth gangs, the heroin and crack epidemics, and an increase in violent crime, and widespread poverty. Today these conditions are vastly diminished and Soundview is more stable, but still affected by crime and poverty.

The community has produced many notable figures, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, NBA player Ed Pinckney, DJ Jazzy Jay, and boxer Mitch Green, amongst others.

Board

The school is seeking to recruit new board members to provide leadership and vision. Holy Cross is thriving and growing while many schools in the Catholic education system are struggling, consolidating or closing. This growth brings challenges in terms of programming, needs for facilities upgrades, and changing demographic profiles of students and community members. The board needs committed members who will support the school and community into its next century of operation.