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One life Fulfilled In the end, itis just about impos- sible to express what it meant to Mount de Sales that Sister Mary Fi- delis Barragan, R.S.M. was its princi- pal for 17% years. To make a simple list of the changes that occurred at our school would be to trivialize them, and to oversimplify the chal- lenges that were met, and the vision of the future which Sister Fidelis saw so clearly. Sister Fidelis came to Mt. de Sales on June 1, 1970 to teach En- glish, and became principal within a year. Sister came to MDS in the same year when many members of the Class of 1988 were born; when she announced her resignation on Janu- ary 9, 1987, Sister Fidelis had been at MDS longer than she had been in any one place since graduating from St. Vincent's in Savannah and enter- ing the Sisters of Mercy. In the years before she came to Mt. de Sales, Sister had had assign- ments in Pensacola, Savannah, Mo- bile and Baltimore. She arrived at MDS just in time for the 1970's, a de- cade in which ten other private schools opened in Bibb County. In that decade, the MDS student body continued to grow despite the fact that there were many more private schools that were available to par- ents who chose private education for their children. A few simple statistics illustrate the changes that have occurred at MDS since Sister Fidelis became principal. The student body has grown in size from 323 to 540. The senior class has more than doubled in size. Minority students now make up 14% of our student body; in 1970, minority students accounted for only 2% of the total enrollment. In 1970, 63% of the student body was Catholic; today more than half our students are of other faiths, making MDS a school of diversity un- matched in Bibb County. When Sister Fidelis first came to MDS, there were 10 Sisters of Mercy on the faculty, where today there are only three. This is one of the greatest challenges that confronted Sister: how to take MDS from a time when the faculty was predominant- ly religious to a time when lay teach- ers would predominate. To those who were accustomed to the pres- ence of Sisters in the classrooms, this was a major change! One of the least understood aspects of this change in faculty is the fact that tu- ition has had to increase in order to make up for the loss of donated ser- vices of those Sisters of Mercy who used to teach at MDS. In these 17 years, Mt. de Sales attracted a tal- ented and devoted faculty. Ten of our Current teachers have been on the staff for ten years or more, and 61% of the faculty have earned Master’s Degrees. Mt. de Sales has moved to meet the challenges that have accompa- nied a changing educational atmo- sphere in Bibb County. First, an 8th grade was established in 1974 in re- sponse to a public school decision to end their elementary programs after grade 7. Again this year MDS moved to meet its future by estab- lishing a 7th grade and incorporating it into a fully self-contained Middle School. These things sound simple enough, but they are evidence of the rigorous demands of a changing educational environment, and MDS has adapted and grown by moving to meet those changes, instead of waiting for them to pass by. Sister Fidelis’ leadership in this period of growth was instrumental. One of greatest challenges Sis- ter Fidelis faced when becoming our principal was the need to restruc- ture our religion curriculum. As she noted in her final Administrator’s Re- port, students in 1970 had a “negative attitude ... toward their daily religion classes, an attitude re- flective of the rebellious 60’s.’’ Also, “religion faculty ... wanted to teach courses in the new spirit of Vatican II,” @ spirit Of Openness and candor, in which the Church (in the words of Pope John XXIiIl) “threw open the windows and let in the fresh air of the 20th cen- tury.” These real concerns were met with a new religion curriculum, stressing individual spirituality that would be “tangibly present on our campus and personally treasured by students and faculty.’’ Religion classes are now en- joyed by more students than ever, and the regular and frequent opportunities for prayer and worship on campus strengthened the primary mission of Mt. de Sales as a Catholic school. A recent graduate described the special spiritual atmosphere of MDS when he wrote of the ‘‘constant presence of God on cam- pus.”’ Today, MDS students better appre- ciate the opportunities afforded in this Mercy school, for growth and comfort. In that sense, religion is more important to us than ever before. That challenge, too, has been successfully met.
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