After installing air conditioning, making safety improvements and implementing a plan to deepen students’ religious education, Greensburg Central Catholic High School is ready to welcome students back to its school halls on Wednesday.
For Superintendent Nancy Rottler, there is no better time than now to be a student at Greensburg Central Catholic.
“It is an exciting time when we can look to the future with a path and a vision that can help us succeed,” she said.
Over the summer, Greensburg Central Catholic installed air conditioning in its cafeteria and gymnasiums, Principal Theresa Szmed said. A window air conditioner was also installed in each classroom.
“This didn’t exist before,” said Szmed.
Security improvements have also been made to the school’s door access systems, she said.
According to Rottler, the security and air conditioning projects were supported by private donations and over $300,000 in emergency funding for nonpublic schools.
The security improvements come with the Greensburg Diocese Police Department, which was created last year. It is the state’s first diocesan police force, Rottler said.
“We are at full capacity with one full-time officer at each school,” she said.
The officers also oversee extracurricular events on diocese grounds, including sporting events and community festivals, Rottler said.
The initiative was well received by parents and families, said Szmed.
“Everything has been positive. (Parents) feel like their child is in a safer environment, and our students in our building are getting along really well with the officer. And he’s becoming part of their daily activities and interacting with them as well in places like the cafeteria and the hallways.”
The diocese will continue to make security improvements based on a security assessment it commissioned from a company several years ago. Szmed declined to provide details.
“We don’t just add things because we want to add them,” she said. “There is a concrete plan.”
But one of the diocese’s biggest goals for the school year is to give students more opportunities to strengthen their faith.
This is in line with Bishop Larry Kulick’s three-year plan released in the spring. The plan, a roadmap for the four-county diocese, places a focus on supporting children and young families.
To implement this plan, the diocese plans to hire 27 regional faith and discipleship leaders to dedicate themselves to youth and young family programs in each parish.
Vincent Reilly, the diocese’s executive director for faith, family and discipleship, has been working with Kulick for over a year to improve the quality of these programs, which are designed to deepen the faith formation of parishioners.
Rottler is working with Reilly to align the Catholic schools’ programs with those of the diocese’s 78 parishes.
For Szmed, it is a blessing to be able to offer students more than just academic support.
“It’s a different way of teaching kids that you don’t see or get in the public school sector,” Szmed said. “Our teachers and school administration can build a relationship based on our faith in the Catholic Church.”
“(They) foster these values in students … and help them develop their character so that they can become global leaders and apply their morals and values as adults.”
This alignment between faith and education is especially important to high school assistant principal Stefanie DeMarco, whose daughter begins preschool at Mother of Sorrows School in Murrysville on Wednesday.
“Just knowing that my values and the way I would teach her would align with the values of her teachers and that I would give her the same guidance that I would want for her,” she said.
DeMarco began as assistant principal in May. Mother of Sorrows Spanish teacher Mary Osche took over as acting assistant principal last school year after Nicole Marchese left her position in June to pursue another opportunity.
This came three months before then-principal Kevin Frye resigned in early September, just two weeks into the school year. The position was filled in November by Theresa Szmed, who had previously worked at Mother of Sorrows.
This year, all of the diocese’s teaching positions have been filled, Rottler said – in contrast to the more than 2,000 vacancies reported in Pennsylvania schools in October.
Last school year, more than 2,780 students were enrolled in the 12-school system, including 360 at Greensburg Central Catholic High School. This represents a 25% increase in enrollment since 2019.
Updated enrollment data will be calculated in October, Rottler said.
Quincey Reese is a TribLive reporter covering the Greensburg and Hempfield areas. She also reports for the Penn-Trafford Star. A native of Penn Township, she joined the Trib in 2023 after spending two summers working with the company as a Jim Borden Fellowship intern. She can be reached at [email protected].
