“I Didn’t Care About Enrollment:” Investigating Catholic School Leader Perceptions of the COVID Era Return to In-Person Instruction

ABSTRACT

Many Catholic schools in the U.S. resumed in-person instruction in 2020–2021 sooner than public schools. But little research has examined whether Catholic school leaders made these decisions in light of parents’ preferences for in-person instruction. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews with Catholic school leaders examining these dynamics in a single Northeastern city. Findings indicate leaders’ decisions were focused on meeting the needs of those parents who had previously made the choice to enroll students at their schools and not on increasing enrollment as its own end. Several implications of these findings are highlighted in the discussion.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholic school leadership
• competition
• market incentives
• organizational decision-making
• urban school choice

Acknowledgments

Support for this study was provided by an internal grant from the Lynch School of Education and Human Development (Warmenhoven Family Endowed Fund). In addition, I would like to acknowledge the collaboration of Michael O’Connor (Roche Center for Catholic Education), Adam Agostinelli (research assistant), and Charlie Cownie and Myra Rosen-Reynoso from the Urban Catholic Teacher Corps of Boston College during the data collection process for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2024.2350819.