Petition Drive Organized By Prince of Peace Student Parents Requesting Their Catholic School Removal From Seton Management

Latino parents of students enrolled at the Prince of Peace K4 and middle schools are circulating a petition among parents requesting for their Catholic School be removed from the Seton Team Management service.

By H. Nelson Goodson

Hispanic News Network U.S.A.

April 26, 2019

Milwaukee, WI - On Friday, several letters of concern that detail complaints from parents at the Prince of Peace (PoP) Catholic Schools (4K and middle school) were released to Hispanic News Network U.S.A. (HNNUSA), which copies were also sent to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D-Milw.), Archbishop Jerome Listecki and Carolyn Stanford Taylor, the DPI Superintendent of Schools including some Board of Director members from Seton. Both Elizabeth Nolasco and Norma Herrera who have their children enrolled at PoP released the letters to HNNUSA and are the key organizers of a parent campaign to get PoP out from the Seton Team Management for their failure to provide extra-curricular activities that includes sports, underachievment issues and who have noticed more than 25 teacher turnover in the last three years at PoP under Seton management. Many of those teacher positions have remained vacant. 

Recently, the principal, a social service worker and a teacher resigned sparking protests by parents at PoP. According to Herrera, the Seton management team finally met with parents during a meeting concerning the recent principal resignation, since taking over the school three years ago. In other words, the parents had not met any of the Seton management team in the last three years.

Since Seton took over at PoP, the state DPI school report card reported that in 2017-2018 students had not improved in their math skills and there was a decrease in reading skills as well.

Nolasco and Herrera in a revised letter to Seton Board members wrote, "This letter is being sent to you because your name is listed on the Board of Directors for Seton Catholic Network.  Included is a screenshot from Seton's own website that claims to offer 9 extracurricular activites to the schools under SCS.  Please explain how three years with Seton Catholic Schools NONE of these have been offered to the children of Prince of Peace school?  How is it possible to overlook the students from the biggest school SCS has? This is NOT right!"

PoP is one of multiple Catholic schools including St. Roman in Seton's management that are now seeking to be removed from the Seton Catholic School Network (SCSN). Parents at PoP are circulating a petition requesting for the local priest in charge at PoP to remove the school from Seton.

According to information related to PoP, Seton gets paid at least $64,000 per year for a service fee from the PoP school budget.

The current SCSN participating Catholic schools include Catholic East, Mary Queen of Saints, Northwest Catholic, Our Lady Queen of Peace, Prince of Peace, St. Catherine, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Martin of Tours, St. Rafael the Archangel, St. Thomas Aquinas Academy and St. Roman. 

HNNUSA previously published an anonymous 4-page letter detailing concerns with Seton, which included a response to the anonymous letter by Seton.