New Head of L.A.’s Catholic Schools Is a Man on a Mission

For Father Albert J. DiUlio, with 20 years of teaching at universities, running them and raising millions of dollars to improve them, being president of the Catholic schools of the Los Angeles Archdiocese is both a bigger job and a smaller one.

DiUlio’s realm is now 103,000 students on 278 campuses in three counties, some with just a few classrooms. About 5,000 teachers staff the schools, but they are not published scholars with PhDs. To see DiUlio address the newest members of the faculty is like watching a college president welcome the freshman class.

“Your work will be appreciated by some, not appreciated by others,” the 58-year-old Jesuit priest told 400 fresh-faced elementary school teachers recently. “Some days will be wonderful. Some days you will wonder why you started.”

Having arrived in July to head the state’s third-largest school system, DiUlio said he has not yet wondered why he came to Southern California. Others might have, though.

Until now, he had spent almost his entire career in higher education: as a finance professor, as president of Xavier University in Cincinnati and Marquette University in Milwaukee, and, most recently, in Ethiopia, where he was investigating the feasibility of a Catholic university. His only previous stint in Los Angeles was 21 years ago, when he worked for the president of Loyola Marymount University in Westchester.

“I liked coming back to L.A. I love L.A. It was easy enough to say yes” to this new job, he said.

In his hometown of Laona, Wis., DiUlio attended public elementary and high school, where his mother taught English. He has a bachelor’s degree in business from Marquette, and a master’s in education, an MBA and a PhD in education and policy analysis, all from Stanford University. He earned a master of divinity degree from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.

DiUlio drives around Los Angeles to learn where his schools are, marveling at the city’s diversity and that on any block he can find several varieties of food and languages.

“Just being here is so unbelievable,” he said recently in his comfortable corner office overlooking Koreatown, the abandoned Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and the distant Hollywood Hills.

As president of the parochial schools--a new position for the 8,762-square-mile archdiocese--DiUlio will focus on long-term issues and strategy for the nation’s fourth-largest Catholic school system (behind Chicago, Philadelphia and New York). Two superintendents, who report to him, are in charge of operations.

With a reputation as a turnaround specialist, DiUlio sees raising money, recruiting teachers, paying them more and upgrading campuses as his top tasks.

“We’re creating the job description, in a sense, as we go along. It’s an administrative job, but it is also deeply involved with the people,” DiUlio said. “You can’t do it [sitting in] this office.”

Found New Job Through Want Ad

The job, DiUlio said, was not one he was looking for, but when a help-wanted ad in a Jesuit magazine caught his eye, he applied to the archdiocese from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

“It was entirely done by e-mail,” he said.

Although some dioceses in California have experienced consistent enrollment increases in recent years, the L.A. archdiocese’s elementary and secondary schools in Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties have seen slight declines.

Catholic schools are also suffering an exodus of teachers. The shrinking ranks of priests and nuns have left most of the instruction to lay people, who are paid as much as 50% less than public school teachers.

“All of the things that were so, in a sense, easy to do some years ago--50 years ago--are harder to do now,” DiUlio said.

Giving raises to parochial school teachers obviously takes money, as does upgrading tired classrooms. But the schools keep tuition well below what the most selective private schools charge and even below the per-pupil spending of area public schools, in part because of the lower-income population many of the parishes serve. Some Catholic schools charge as little as $800 per year, and even then, some parents still apply for scholarships.

Unlike many private schools, parochial schools closely mirror the demographics of the local population: Last year, 45% of students enrolled in the archdiocese’s schools were Latino, 32% white, 15% Asian and about 8% black, according to the California Catholic Conference. Nearly 13% of students qualify for federally subsidized lunches and other government assistance.

More than 5,000 archdiocesan schoolchildren receive some financial aid from the L.A.-based Catholic Education Foundation. Although the foundation has its own staff to raise money, DiUlio will help.

As a university president, he played a key role in shattering fund-raising records at both Xavier and Marquette.

“The trick is, it’s very personal,” DiUlio said, explaining how he cultivates donations. “People want to know what the vision is, where things are going. They want to be assured that moneys given are well spent. They like to make a difference.”

Royster Hedgepeth, who led Marquette’s development office for most of DiUlio’s tenure, said his former boss has the charm, charisma and power of persuasion that make a successful chief executive, whether he is raising money or launching a new academic program.

“He really is very, very good at engaging people in a conversation about the cause that he is forwarding,” Hedgepeth said.

Despite nearly doubling Marquette’s endowment as president from 1990 to 1996, DiUlio left the university with a $6-million deficit, which forced layoffs and steep tuition increases.

He also drew criticism--but also significant praise--for a $53-million redevelopment project that upgraded the blighted area of Milwaukee surrounding the campus. After the improvements, the area’s crime decreased and the university’s enrollment increased, but Marquette lost money when it dumped the improved properties at rock-bottom prices to pay other bills.

DiUlio said Marquette’s enrollment had declined because students were afraid to live in the neighborhood. (It did not help that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer practiced his cannibalism in a nearby apartment building, which Marquette bought and razed.)

Since then, Marquette’s enrollment has increased.

Inner-City Schools Are a Priority

DiUlio again has his eyes on the inner city. Although the archdiocesan schools are scattered over three counties--urban, suburban and rural--he seems most intent on improving about 50 elementary schools and about 10 high schools in central L.A.

“All the schools are important,” he said, but “some of them are more self-sufficient than others.”

Father William Leahy, DiUlio’s top aide at Marquette, said his friend of 30 years has the energy and creativity to succeed at this new challenge.

“He’ll think anew of how the school system will do even better,” said Leahy, a Jesuit who is president of Boston College.

DiUlio’s assessment of his mission: “This is not so much turning something around as it is keeping momentum.”

At the orientation for new teachers, he demonstrated the talent his admirers say he has for public speaking.

Fluidly mixing humor with inspiration--without a script--he urged the audience of mostly young college graduates to impart knowledge and Christian morality to their students.

Their workplaces are “holy,” he told them. “A classroom is more than just four walls and a chalkboard because, when you add students and you add yourselves, it really becomes life-giving.”