St. Paul: Archdiocese addresses growth of "students' specialized learning needs"
At Ave Maria Academy in Maple Grove, Ericka Walz has seen students’ specialized learning needs grow in recent years. In Vermillion, Pam McSweeney at St. John the Baptist Catholic School has observed the same.
Recognizing the changing needs led both experienced school leaders — from very different preK-8 schools on opposite sides of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis — to a workshop at St. Charles Borromeo in Minneapolis Aug. 17-19. For three days, small teams from their schools — and 12 others — received training to help them better identify student needs, set goals and measure improvement.
Ave Maria’s head of school since 2024, Walz said she and her team wanted to improve their ability to meet broader needs, but desired direction. “We want to be a place that welcomes all children who desire a really robust education,” said Walz, whose suburban school enrolls around 220 students, because “first and foremost, we’re a Catholic school.” McSweeney, principal of rural St. John the Baptist — which enrolls about 120 students — shared a similar view: “I believe we’re called to do it.”
The training, which used a framework called Multi-Tiered System of Supports, was the first major initiative born of the Archdiocesan Commission on Students with Special Needs in Catholic Education. The archdiocese’s Office for the Mission of Catholic Education (OMCE) convened the 17-member commission in April 2025 to examine the current special education landscape with the goal of developing recommendations on how to expand or better serve students with unique needs in its Catholic schools. Commission members made formal recommendations to Archbishop Bernard Hebda last October, which are expected to be published for Catholic schools this fall.
Leading the training was Ellen Grossman, a special education consultant, school psychologist and founder of Uptick Education, a company she launched in 2022 “to help bridge the gap” as schools aimed to address “increased student needs paired with a shortage of qualified special educators,” according to its website, uptickeducation.com.
A parent of two daughters who attend St. Joseph School in Rosemount, Grossman was also a member of the archdiocese’s special needs commission. She called that experience “an honor in my career” for uniting her passion with faith.
In an Aug. 19 interview, Grossman explained that most of her work has been in public schools that are required to make their systems more accessible to learners with special needs.
“So, for the Catholic schools to choose to make their systems more accessible because it’s the right thing to do is a different ‘why,’ and I think extremely powerful,” she said.
Comments