Don’t say Notre Dame Sister Margaret Farley is retiring. “That would mean I wasn’t going to do anything else,” said Sister Margaret, 81, who formally left her position with the Office of Catholic Schools after 44 years on June 3. “Say I’m resigning.” As for what she’ll do, Sister Margaret isn’t quite sure. It will start with a three-week trip back east to visit with members of the Congregation of Notre Dame in Rhode Island and with family in New York. After that? Probably some kind of volunteering that would extend her more than 60-year career in Catholic schools. “I used to be a reading teacher, so I could do that,” she said. “I could teach young students to read. But not five days a week, and I wouldn’t want to be paid.” Sister Margaret grew up in New York, attending Catholic grade school in Queens and high school in Manhattan, at a school run by the congregation she ended up joining. Once the thought of becoming a religious sister occurred to her, she said, it just didn’t go away. Her younger sister knew she was considering a religious vocation and “blabbed” to their mother, who was ill, Sister Margaret said. “My mother asked me to wait a year, because she thought she might be better,” Sister Margaret said. But her mother died just a couple of months before Sister Margaret graduated from high school. She ended up attending college on Staten Island for one year before joining the congregation. Sister Margaret started her teaching career at Notre Dame de Chicago School, where she was assigned for five years. “Great kids,” she said of the diverse school. “Great parents, too.” Then she ministered in Connecticut, Vermont and New York, before coming back to Chicago to work in the archdiocesan schools office. While she had a variety of jobs, she worked mostly with principals as director of school personnel, helping them staff their schools or helping them reduce staff size when enrollment decreased. A statement from the Office of Catholic Schools lauded her “vast knowledge of OCS and faculties surrounding our system throughout her years here.” That knowledge base will be missed, officials said. What many people don’t realize, Sister Margaret said, is there is a shortage of qualified teachers, and it can be hard to hire and keep them in Catholic schools, which pay less than their public school counterparts. “Also, if you teach in a Catholic school, chances are you’re going to have to teach religion,” she said, adding that teachers have to get their own formation to do that. “There is a lot of support for them.” Principals also are very supportive of one another, Sister Margaret said, and if a school closes or has to reduce staff, other Catholic schools generally try to hire those teachers. “We have had schools close or have falling enrollment,” she said. “But we’ve also had some others that are exploding.” Principals, she said, need to be aware of the need to groom good teachers to be school administrators. “A lot of them are doing it,” she said. “Either for their own schools or for the system.”
St. Bede School in Ingleside to close despite massive fundraising Father George Koeune, pastor of Our Lady of the Lakes Parish and St. Bede School in Ingleside, announced on March 21 that St. Bede School would close at the end of this school year because of low registration for next school year.
St. Frances of Rome School in Cicero to remain open St. Frances of Rome School in Cicero received welcome news March 6 when the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that the school, which was slated to close in June, would remain open.
Marian’s Sister Mary Jo using newfound fame to talk about God Before she was a sister, Sister Mary Jo Sobieck was an athlete. Sister Mary Jo, 50, started playing softball, basketball and volleyball in elementary school, and she was a three-sport athlete all through high school and her first two years of college. She dropped basketball for her final two years, but stuck with softball and volleyball.