Our Programs > Holy Family School
“Compassion, not judgment” is the motto of the St. Francis Center, where dedicated volunteers distribute free food and clothing to more than 500 families each month. Clients are Hispanic immigrants who live nearby in impoverished neighborhoods in Fair Oaks and Redwood City. The center also manages the 24-unit St. Clare apartments next door and a community garden where residents grow organic produce.
Director Sister Christina Heltsley knew that her center provided vital basic services with dignity and compassion, but its inability to break the cycle of poverty frustrated her. Her clients regularly struggle with employment, housing and health care needs.
When PVF Director Bill Somerville asked Sister Christina, “If you could add a service, what would it be?” she responded immediately.
“A school!” she said. “Education is the only way to break the cycle.”
That was more than six years ago. With PVF funding from an anonymous donor, the center launched the tuition-free Holy Family School. This bright, cheerful one-room schoolhouse in the back of a double-wide trailer is filled with 12 animated fourth-graders, their artwork and books. Kindergarteners when they entered the school in 2001 speaking no English, they now excel in all subjects. Each has aspirations for college and careers — “a veterinarian,” “an artist,” “a doctor,” “a teacher,” they say.
Sister Christina recruited a talented educator, Sister Susan Ostrowski, to teach the children. The sisters knew that family involvement and education would be critical to the school’s success, so mothers of the students commit to learning English and computer skills one day a week. All 12 students graduated in 2007 from 5th grade; also "graduating" were their mothers. The school is a model for using education to move immigrant families toward self-sufficiency.
PVF built on an established relationship with an outstanding nonprofit director, took the initiative to discover what more could be done, embraced risk, trusted Sister Christina’s lightning-bolt idea, and moved quickly to implement it.
The outcome is not only a successful school run by two outstanding professionals, but a model for using education to move immigrant families toward self-sufficiency.
Enthusiastic fourth-graders respond to Sister Susan Ostrowski at Holy Family School in Fair Oaks, CA. This model K-5 school for low-income, immigrant children was initiated and funded by a PVF program grant.
"Listening to little Sergio reading, it occurred to me that he will be the very first person in his family to be literate in any language. The confidence is tangible when you walk into the classroom. You are looking at a generation that is going to make it. Sergio's mom is coming along too; she is able to read simple, phonetically controlled books. And Sergio's 38-year grandmother is learning to write her name in manuscript and cursive. We work together to raise the literacy rate of the entire family."
- Sister Christina Heltsley,
Holy Family School
Photo: Craig Sherod