Learning From Santa Margarita : Experts Watch High-Tech Catholic School

With the fog-shrouded hills of the Cleveland National Forest behind him, Father Michael Harris, founding principal of Santa Margarita Catholic High School, strode through the colonnades and courtyards of the campus, pointing out one reason after another why the school is considered a state-of-the-art education showcase.

Harris noted the college-style lecture halls, the 30,000-volume capacity library with computerized research facilities, the 2,000-seat gymnasium, the science wing, the separate counseling and performing arts buildings. He described the underground cables and wires that provide computer links for students’ home access and research, and plans for the school’s own cable television channel.

School a Year Old

Santa Margarita, 1 year old in September, is considered the nation’s most sophisticated Catholic high school and is being watched as a demonstration model for future schools, said Sister Catherine McNamee, president of the National Catholic Educational Assn. in Washington.

The $26-million school may also be a harbinger of the future for its significant contributions from non-Catholics.

From now on, predicted Harris, “it’s going to require more than the Catholic Church exclusively to fund the building of schools.”

About half the cost of the school--$12.5 million--came from general collections taken in the 52 parishes of the Diocese of Orange. The rest came from 295 pledges from the private sector, including many from non-Catholics. A total of $3 million came from two philanthropist couples, John and Donna Crean, who are Lutherans, and William and Willa Dean Lyon, who are Presbyterians.

“My motivation was based upon my conviction that this was a superior educational project; a project capable of having a major impact on secondary education in our community,” Lyon was quoted as saying in a fund-raising publication. “Nothing can supplant a good education.”

Lyon donated $1.5 million for the school. He is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the William Lyon Co., a Newport Beach real estate development company that is building homes in the rapidly growing community of Rancho Santa Margarita.

South Orange County developer Tony Moiso, a Roman Catholic and president of the Santa Margarita Co., added, “We wanted to provide the best educational opportunity we could, since we were only going to do this once.”

Donated 40 Acres

Moiso co-chaired the fund-raising campaign and donated 40 acres owned by his family to the church as part of the 5,000-acre development of Rancho Santa Margarita--a high-density instant town built on an isolated mesa between Mission Viejo and the Cleveland National Forest.

Nearly all of Santa Margarita High’s students live south of the Costa Mesa Freeway--Orange County’s so-called Mason-Dixon Line, separating the generally older, poorer communities from the younger, richer ones of the south county. Tuition at Santa Margarita is $2,700 a year, the same as at other diocese high schools, but financial aid is available.

This year, $45,000 in tuition aid was available to those who met the school’s strict admission requirements, according to Harris. “Any qualified student with desire and ability to be here” will be admitted, he said. About 15% of the pupils are minorities--mostly Latino; 7% of the students are receiving tuition aid, he said.

Many of the students had been attending or seeking entry to the county’s only other coeducational Catholic high school, Mater Dei in Santa Ana. As a result, Mater Dei, which turned away 600 applicants in 1985 due to overcrowding, has been able to enroll more qualified students, school officials said.

(The county’s other Catholic high schools are Rosary High School in Fullerton, St. Michael’s Preparatory High School of the Norbertine Fathers in El Toro, and the Cornelia Connelly School of the Holy Child for girls and Servite High School for boys, both in Anaheim.

(Other private south county high schools are St. Margaret’s School, an Episcopal school, and Capistrano Valley Christian Schools. Both have students from preschool through high school.)

At Santa Margarita, 25% of the 581 freshmen and sophomores are not Catholic. Nationwide, the percentage of non-Catholics in Catholic schools has risen from 2.7% in 1970 to 11.2% in 1987-88, largely due to those seeking religion in education, McNamee said. Parents in such suburban areas as Orange County, unlike their counterparts in inner cities, are less likely to be upset about perceived declines in public education, she said.

As the numbers of non-Catholics at Catholic schools have increased nationally, secular and corporate donors have increasingly been sought to keep Catholic schools open across the country, particularly in inner-city areas of New York and Philadelphia, McNamee said. While immigrant Catholics, who were the first patrons of Catholic education in those cities, have become successful and moved to the suburbs, many felt a continued obligation to offer educational services to the minority populations who took their places, McNamee said.

But in other places, such as Orange County, she said, business leaders recognize a good investment in Catholic schools.

“They have hired a lot of (Catholic school) graduates, find they can read well, write well, have a sense of responsibility and are coming to work on time. Most feel they are making a contribution to the community and to the business community,” McNamee said.

While Father Harris said some families have moved to the new town, which is one of the largest planned communities in the West, to be closer to the school, Moiso noted that the school was intended to serve all of the south county as well.

Years before the late Bishop William Johnson started to pursue the idea of establishing a new school in 1976, Father Paul Martin of Mission San Juan Capistrano had asked Moiso to help build a school in that area, Moiso recalled. “We started long before there was a road to Rancho Santa Margarita,” he said.

An early feasibility study showed there was considerable interest, even among non-Catholics in south Orange County, in helping to fund a first-rate, private college prep school if it had a “solid foundation of Christian values,” said Bob Sharp, consultant to the fund-raising campaign for the high school.

Many donors, Sharp said, just “wanted to know there was God in school.”

“We just liked what we saw,” explained philanthropist Donna Crean, citing the hallmarks of Catholic education: unquestioned authority and discipline. “Children need discipline and guidance. It’s awfully hard on the public schools to correct children, to punish them.

“The father and the school (have) the authority, and the kids realize that and accept it. They’re crazy about Father Harris. They respect him.”

On a recent tour of the campus, Harris called out to students by name. Some spontaneously hugged him. When he walked unannounced into a classroom, the teacher looked pleased, and the entire uniformed class of sophomores stood enthusiastically.

The best thing about the school, the students said, is Father Harris. The worst, the uniform dress code.

Many appreciate the rigorous personal attention the parochial school provides.

“We have a rule,” Harris said. “No one is allowed to fail.” Individual counseling is intense, and those who do not make up a failing grade the following summer are dismissed, he said.

The school’s high standards are a “challenging prospect” for south county Catholic students, said Sister Margaret Walsh, principal of Our Lady of Fatima, a San Clemente school for kindergartners through middle-school students.

Bishop McFarland often refers to Santa Margarita as “elitist,” she said. “But that’s only in terms of the excellence of education. . . . He has asked all of us to have that same spirit of excellence.”

So far, she has sent 31 students to Santa Margarita High School, and not all were wealthy, she said.

Religion for Non-Catholics

At Santa Margarita, the large numbers of non-Catholic students are not proselytized. But school officials said they are expected each year to take a yearlong religion class taught from the Catholic perspective, as well as attend a monthly Mass along with the rest of the student body.

After some student complaints in the first year, Harris said, religion teachers were told to clarify their message. Rather than being told the Pope is infallible, for example, non-Catholic students hear that Catholics believe the Pope is infallible, he said.

Now, while the school is new, it can accommodate non-Catholics. As it fills up and space becomes scarce, Catholic applicants eventually will have priority over non-Catholics, Harris said. “The Catholic community is primarily maintained by Catholics,” he explained.

Santa Margarita High’s emphasis on high technology--with its computers and state-of-the-art facilities in everything from the science lab to the library--may also be a model for Catholic schools to come, McNamee said.

“We live in an information age, and people who control information will have a great influence on shaping the world of the 21st Century. . . . It’s important to have demonstration projects to see what works well” to further Catholic educators’ goals of integrating values and technology.”

If Santa Margarita works well, she said, it will be proof for potential donors here and elsewhere.