St. Olaf principal featured in national podcast

Friday, Dec. 25, 2020

BOUNTIFUL – Simon McFall, principal of St. Olaf School, was recently interviewed in a National Catholic Educational Association podcast to celebrate Catholic Principal Appreciation Day. 

McFall, one of two principals interviewed by the NCEA’s chief innovation officer, Dr. Kevin Baxter, shared his administrative team’s efforts to build a culture that connects the school and the parish in an intentional way.

The interview opportunity came out of the blue, McFall said. Baxter’s research team called the school to find out about the culture-building efforts, and seemed particularly impressed with the school’s 7 percent increase in enrollment this year as well as the school’s efforts to unify the school and parish communities, he said.

Not long after, Baxter’s team invited McFall to participate in the Nov. 25 podcast, along with Domenic Franconi, principal of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic School in Belmont, Miss. During his 30-minute interview, McFall shared some of the school’s successes and its challenges, particularly those during this year’s pandemic.

For McFall, honoring the charism and legacy of the Daughters of Charity, the religious sisters who founded the school, is particularly important, as is finding ways to reinvigorate the community. As part of those efforts, the school has held events such as the 2019 Halloween carnival and car show, which brought many former students and parishioners back to the campus.

“We were just trying to find ways of bringing the community together,” McFall said in the podcast. “We wanted to create an event where people felt welcome, they felt part of the greater community and they saw the community alive, they saw the community blossoming into what it could be.” 

Part of that blossoming was a planned campus renovation that was completed this year despite the pandemic, McFall said. When the pandemic hit and St. Olaf’s, along with other Utah schools, went into a soft closure, the leadership team considered putting the renovation and its capital campaign on hold, but ultimately decided to move forward. 

At that time, the relationships that had been renewed with former parishioners and alumni  bore fruit; many of them gave generously to the renovation campaign. McFall said the donors told him, “‘This is because we believe in what the school should be, has been and will be, and we want to be stewards; we want to be there to keep that relationship going.’”

Participating in the podcast “was a blessing to share the good news of our school and our diocese,” McFall said. “It was an incredible opportunity to talk about what has been able to occur here with the parishioners, with the families in the school.”

Some of that good news is the great return the school has seen on its new social media campaign, McFall said; the enrollment of five new students in the last month can be traced directly to that campaign. 

McFall shared with the Intermountain Catholic an email from a parent, who is not a Catholic, who had enrolled his children at St. Olaf this year.

“I cannot believe the gift of faith I received for my children in enrolling them this year. It was not what I anticipated and more than I could have ever asked for,” the email read.

“That, the fact we were so blessed to serve that family in that way is a testament to our teachers, to our parent community, to our Church, to the diocese in general,” McFall said. “None of this works without the efforts of our teachers and staff in these schools. In our school that includes our parish office and pastor.”

“People need faith more now than ever,” he added. “We [in the Catholic schools] sometimes in our humility want to make sure we’re not being too prideful, too boastful and that’s important, but at the same time we have such a blessing to offer communities, to offer people in our communities.”

The NCEA podcast can be found at https://lnns.co/EnJqhK4zIPa.