With wildfires displacing students and teachers, and immigration raids upending the lives of local families, it’s been a tumultuous 2025 for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Catholic schools, to say the least.
But while this year has brought challenges, school officials said it’s also presented many opportunities for growth, resilience, and innovation.
That resolve is highlighted in the archdiocese’s Department of Catholic Schools’ (DCS) first Impact Report, a new 32-page publication that spotlights areas of academic progress, challenges, goals, and investments for the archdiocese’s 252 schools and more than 65,000 students.
“We wanted to tell our story and I think it’s a really great example of a coalition of educators and philanthropists and the entire Catholic community really rallying behind our schools,” said Paul Escala, superintendent of DCS. “When we do it really well, these are the outcomes. So we felt like it was time for us to share this in a contextualized way.”
“We also know it’s the start, and we plan to add more, what we’re calling ‘chapters’ to the story, to really make sure that people know that there’s real change, real people being impacted, and real progress happening,” said Rachel Rufus, DCS’ chief of staff in charge of data, assessment and accreditation.
The report provides detailed snapshots of initiatives that DCS has been focusing on for the past few years, including STEM, college readiness and enrollment, and Solidarity Schools.
The latter program, which provides additional resources to low-income area Catholic schools to improve academic skills for its students, especially in reading and math, is part of a higher priority to service the needs of the archdiocese’s most vulnerable kids.
“We identify what is seemingly a nationwide problem in reading and math literacy, particularly among those students who are being served in our poorest communities, and we decided we’re going to do something about this,” Escala said. “And Solidarity Schools really is the launch pad for this initiative.”
Another highlight in the report is the Catholic Educator Investment Initiative, which thanks largely to Shea Family Charities and the Leavey Foundation, poured about $10-11 million each of the past four years into attracting and keeping teachers in Catholic schools. At one point, the teacher vacancy rate in the archdiocese was 54%, Escala said. Thanks to the initiative, the vacancy rate is now at 99%.
“We’ve closed the gap,” Escala said. “We know that when we have consistency and low turnover rate among faculty and principals, students perform better.”
The impact wouldn’t be possible without the generous contributions to the department’s many donors and philanthropic partners, including the SMET Foundation, Catholic Community Foundation of LA, and the Success for All Foundation.
Two major gifts have been especially transformative in recent months: The $1.1 million given by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in September and a significant monetary gift from Jim and Leslie Belardi in May.
“This is an affirmation of the work that our schools are doing, and the direction that we’re leading the schools in,” Escala said.
“Our donors are at the heart of making this kind of work possible.”
Read the report at bit.ly/DCSImpact2025.
