Practice what you teach

Mark R. Madler

Paul Sullivan stood inside Holy Cross Hall at St. Francis Xavier

School, motioning to the modest stage and the food service area.

The previous school he worked at, Sullivan explained, did not have

the resources to keep up its buildings, so he liked what he saw at

St. Francis.

“It’s nice to come to a place with well-kept facilities,” Sullivan

said. “They’ve done a good job maintaining it.”

When the new school year begins Wednesday at St. Francis Xavier,

students will have a new head administrator in Sullivan, a Burbank

native. He replaces Mary Roehrick, who had been the principal for

three years.

Sullivan comes to St. Francis after 13 years at St. Catherine of

Siena School in Reseda, where he had been a teacher, assistant

principal and principal.

After more than a decade at the school, he felt it was time to

move on and applied at St. Francis after being told of the opening

by a friend who worked there, Sullivan said.

Rita Recker, the business manager for the parish and school, said

Sullivan went through a series of interviews with teachers, parents

and the parish leadership council before being chosen as the new

administrator.

“We liked that his family was from Burbank,” Recker said. “He

comes with a lot of experience, and we were looking for someone to

make changes at the school.”

A graduate of St. Finbar School and Notre Dame High School in

Sherman Oaks, Sullivan pointed to himself as an example of a Catholic

education.

Sending their children to St. Francis is important to parents

because it reinforces Catholic values, he said.

“A Catholic school is where religion is taught and Catholic values

are practiced daily,” Sullivan said. “Those things help mold a

child’s future.”

New classes to be implemented under Sullivan’s watch are an

eighth-grade algebra class and a Spanish class for all students from

kindergarten through eighth grade.

“It will be part of the curriculum and meant not to be too

labor-intensive,” Sullivan said. “It will be conversational.”

Focus groups of parents and former students led to the addition of

the Spanish class to better prepare graduates going to high school,

but it was Sullivan’s suggestion that all class levels learn the

language, Recker said.