| State: California | Number of Students: 79,991 |
| School Type: Parochial School System | Free and Reduced Lunch: N/A |
| Grade Level: K-12 | English Language Learners: N/A |
School Context
Leadership for Faith: The mission of LA Catholic Schools is to provide spiritual growth in addition to academicachievement. Therefore all teachers must maintain Catechetical certification.
Leadership for Excellence: LA Catholic Schools believe that strong leadership is critical so they have developed aLeadership Formation Program to prepare Catholic school leaders. In regards to teacher quality, all Catholic schoolteachers are required to have or be working towards a California state teaching credential.
Leadership for Stewardship: LA Catholic Schools aim to ensure that all school leaders and pastors receive financialmanagement training so they can make positive business choices for their schools.
Innovation for Opportunity: LA Catholic Schools believes that innovation is critical to student success and aims tosupport all schools by upgrading technology infrastructure, and to explore and expand innovative teaching models suchas blended learning, dual-language immersion, and inclusion.
Growth for Impact: LA Catholic Schools has a goal to increase enrollment from 80,000 to 115,000 by 2020. Thisincludes ramping up marketing and exploring new possibilities for tuition assistance.
State of Technology
A Powerful Partnership: In 2010, the Archdiocese of Los AngelesDepartment of Catholic Schools started the Catholic CommunicationCollaboration (C3) Initiative, a 4-year pilot project for updatingtechnology and ramping up its use in classrooms. Early in 2016, itpartnered with Sprint to launch C3: Ignite, a $6 million program toaccelerate technology in LA Catholic Schools. The program will provideselected schools with Sprint tablets that include content resources,as well as training for school leaders and teachers. The Archdiocese isallowing schools to submit proposals describing how they would usethe tools to improve teaching and learning and the selected schoolswill launch the program in August 2016. A main goal of the programis to allow for more intentional focus for using technology to improveteaching and learning.
Making Tech Integration Special: Leadership is a key priority forThe Archdiocese, so they have partnered with Loyola MarymountUniversity to provide a certificate program for Technology IntegrationSpecialization. The program blends coursework with fieldwork andobservation focused around teacher leadership, technology competencyand professional learning communities. The program is unique becauseit focuses on supporting and developing teachers and school leadersspecifically as technology leaders.
Equal Infrastructure: The Archdiocese is focused on eliminating thetechnology gap for students at school and at home. It has set a targetfor all schools to have robust wireless Internet infrastructure to support1:1 computing at each school’s fully enrolled capacity over the nextseven years and is aggressively pursuing E-rate funding to support thiseffort. In 2015, the Archdiocese received $1.8 million and in 2016 they areprojecting another $1.5 million in E-rate funding. This funding will helpmake technology more accessible in schools. The C3: Ignite Initiativeoverlaps with this work, making technology more accessible at homesince students can take their Sprint tablets home.
Tech Needs & Requirements
The district has a high preference for cross-platform, web-based tools andresources. Clever/Google Apps/Active Directory integrationpreferred. Flexible purchasing options such as the ability to offerper user licensing as well as site licensing is preferred.
Initiatives
Professional capacity and leadership development using technology
Collaborative tools and resources across schools
Adaptive, web-based, content-area-specific digital software