You Don’t Have to Lead Alone with Dr. Vince Cascone Building Ownership Around Your School’s Mission

You Don’t Have to Lead Alone with Dr. Vince Cascone

Building Ownership Around Your School’s Mission

What makes a great Catholic school? After 19 years as a principal and seven years as a superintendent, Dr. Vince Cascone believes it starts with strong leadership—but strong leaders don’t do everything alone. 

In this episode, Vince shares how principals can stay focused on mission amid the daily noise, build trust through relationships, involve teachers, parents, and students in meaningful ways, and create a sense of shared ownership throughout the school community. From enrollment and retention to leadership teams and student voice, the conversation explores how bringing the right people to the table can help principals carry the load while keeping everyone moving in the same direction. 

If you need help with how to center your community on the same page, please schedule a time to talk with us today. https://bit.ly/Build-IT-Better-Together

To receive a copy of the Catholic School Excellence Toolkit - A Reflective Workbook for Visionary Catholic School Leaders,  click here. It is the companion to the podcast: In Search of Catholic School Excellence.

Dr. Vince Cascone spent 19 years as a Catholic school principal and 7 years as a superintendent.He’s been where you are. He understands the weight of leading a school community — and he’s seen firsthand what becomes possible when principals have the right support.

His school earned a U.S. Department of Education National Blue Ribbon award. He’s been recognized as both the NAESP National Distinguished Principal and the NCEA Distinguished Principal of the Year. He also teaches a Master's-level School Leadership course at Benedictine College.

"I built Seton Educational Services because no principal should have to do this alone."

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What is In Search of Catholic School Excellence?

In Search of Catholic School Excellence
Exploring the programs, people, and practices making a difference in Catholic education. Join host Thomas Boles as we hear from principals, teachers, and innovators shaping the future of Catholic schools. Whether you're a leader looking for ideas or an advocate for Catholic education, this show is your guide to what’s working—and why it matters.

Be sure to check out the show notes, as each episode comes with a companion guide to help you implement the ideas discussed during the episodes.

 Transcription is done automatically. Please excuse any errors.

Welcome back, folks. Here's another episode. This week I'm joined by Dr. Vince Cascone, who was most recently the superintendent of schools in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. Welcome, Dr. Vince, or Vince. Thank you very much, Thomas. I'm glad to be here and yes, Vince works fine. Thank you. So it's a rarity that we get a chance to sit down with a superintendent or even a former superintendent and be able to talk about what what good schools look like.

So I'd just like to start off with a simple question of in your experience as a superintendent, principal consultant over all these years, have you noticed any patterns for the schools that are doing great things? Well, absolutely. The, the number one thing is leadership. We could have some schools that, that have some difficulties around them but the school leader really makes or breaks the situation.

And where that school leader is strong those areas where the school might otherwise struggle they end up doing very well. So that, that's for sure the school leadership. Yeah. So important to have somebody in there who is guiding the ship. And I can speak of, a, of a handful of principals who would be brand new and still possess that skill of being able to instill confidence and security.

What do you find that give us one or two characteristics of somebody that would who would be a great leader. Yeah. I think you see that a strong leader has those specific leadership abilities of being able to stay focused on the most important issues. As a principal in a Catholic school, there are so many different things getting in the way, so many different voices of different groups of people.

And for a, a strong leader, he or she needs to be able to kinda move beyond the noise and say, "Okay, what's the most important thing here? What is the thing that will keep us focused on our mission, and the thing that will keep us focused on what's best for students?" So it sounds simple but it's really not, and that really strong leadership is a rare thing, and it's golden when we find it for our Catholic schools.

Yeah. I was just discussing this morning how the, the job is hard, but it's not complex, right? Like it's a pretty simple thing. It's just really hard to do. Right, right. It's so incredibly hard to as you say deal with that noise, take in, try to please everybody or at least be able to take those shots by parents or whoever who has their opinion about how things should be done, and to still stay on top of the mission.

I mean, it must be incredibly hard to do all that on top of just keeping business open. I think that's, it's the schools are like a small corporation and it's not necessarily something a teacher got involved, was trained well for and then they've arrived at this point where they're gonna be a principal.

It seems like there's a lot of work that has to get done after the fact. Yeah, a lot of those, those leadership skills are some of them you just can't learn. You just have to have them. And I had a pastor I worked with for a number of years, Father Pat Rush, and he would say one of the difficulties of being a Catholic school principal is you're really on the tectonic plates between faculty and staff members and parents.

'Cause a lot of times, whether you're dealing with test scores or you're dealing with discipline matters or whatever- Mm-hmm ... Walking that fine line and finding the sweet spot between supporting faculty and staff members and working with princ- or parents and letting them know, "This is why we're doing what we're doing.

This is how this is best for your child." So there really is a sweet spot of that leadership that's needed. Yeah. And I think it's often hard to find for principals especially new ones who don't have that network already built up. But who does a principal turn to when they need help, right?

'Cause they're at the top, right? And they may have the pastor, but even then, in dealing with the pastor, you have all kinds of other situations. I always try to push folks to find other principals, but building a network of folks that can, you can r- rely on for advice, even just to share ideas and kind of spitball things.

Did you find that you had a good source of folks that you could lean on when you were principal or even more so as a superintendent? I think on one hand, yes but as I look back in hindsight y- you're the person in the school that is the decision-maker. And the thing that's difficult with interacting with all those different groups, as I said, is it's a lot easier from those perspectives to throw out opinions of how things should be, why they should be this way or that way.

Mm-hmm. But it's a different level of accountability and responsibility when you're the decision-maker. Mm-hmm. And so I've always felt that as a principal, and certainly as a superintendent, you're on an island. Yeah. And you are the person. You're the man, you're the woman you're the person who has to make decisions about all things, who's going to take the bullets on all things- that someone wants to if they have a, a concern about something or a complaint everything falls at your feet. So I always have felt that it's a lonely place to be, and principals in Catholic schools especially need someone to walk with them in that path. Yeah, that's so true. I can think of the...

Right now, at least in our diocese here in San Francisco, there, we're having a, a, an issue of less children, right? And I think it's a national thing, where there's less and less kids in schools. And so enrollment's a big issue. And looking at each other, the principals all looking at each other kind of like, "Hey, we're all in the same boat," trying to find ways to differentiate or to f- find that path forward, I think is one of the biggest problems that they're facing right now. And they don't necessarily have a whole lot of answers. So even if they have, they can lean on each other, no one's got it figured out. Have you dealt with that kind of situation in Kansas City, or is that a thing that's an issue in that archdiocese?

Absolutely. I think it's an issue everywhere. And I mean, the bottom line is we wanna have as many students in our schools because that's our opportunity and the church's best opportunity to evangelize- Right ... to our young people and to their families. So i- in all schools, we want more students to be coming to our schools.

I think a lot of times when we deal with enrollment and enrollment struggles, we focus on how do we get more kids into the school- Mm-hmm ... But maybe we don't put as much time on retaining the students that we currently have in the school. But the bottom line is this just from a business perspective, if we wanna look at it that way, we have a phenomenal product.

Our Catholic schools, e- everybody across the country will say, "If we get a parent into our Catholic schools and they see what we offer, what we do and finances weren't a huge problem- ... They would be here. They wanna be here." So you see more and more organizations pop up, diocese, we have the Catholic Education Foundation, which really started up and is doing a wonderful job of helping families who couldn't afford Catholic education otherwise.

And I think fortunately we have this great trend of some tax credit scholarships and school choice that's kinda going across, a- across the country. Mm-hmm. And I think that's a great thing to be able to tell the families out there that might not have otherwise considered Catholic schools, "This is a real option and one that you'll be very happy with for yourself and for your children."

Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. If they can get inside the building they typically are overwhelmed with how awesome it is. But it's just- And what a community. Y- you know this, the thing that they all say, I mean it feels like a family. Yeah. More the, more so than anywhere it feels like a family and a community.

And who doesn't wanna belong to a, a, a great family and community like that? Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's an interesting point. So we've talked a lot on these episodes about how schools try to distinguish themselves, and they'll talk about how they're great family, wonderful community, dedicated teachers.

And it always feels like, well that's the baseline. That's what we all have in common, right? As opposed to the differentiator. And if we're building from that where else can we go? And if you were giving advice to principals where else can they find that differentiation?

Because I feel like- ... as a base, a Catholic school's already taken care of those things, right? Like you can feel good about the fact that you are entering a place that has a mission. It's a place of faith. It's got a good community. It's going to have good teachers. And the teachers are all being pulled from the same pool of folks, right?

I mean, in your diocese, they're all gonna be from the diocese, right? So that's all pretty sim- similar. How do schools find a way to be different, special? Well, and I think part of the, the challenge that some schools have is sometimes we do water down our faith a little bit. And sometimes we want to...

W- we think that by doing that, we're opening it up to more people which we certainly want more people in our schools. And one of the strengths of our Catholic schools is we have a lot of non-Catholic families that come to our schools. Mm-hmm. And that's a great strength. But at the same time, if we stay true to who we are it's so, number one, counter-cultural.

Number two, it's so like Christ intends us to be, and that's a big draw. So I think being true to who we are is a big part of it, and we're starting to see some trends that are different than they've been for a number of years. After COVID, we saw some bump in enrollment. We're seeing church attendance and people who are coming into the Catholic faith.

Those numbers are growing, and to me, that says that people are looking for the faith that we have. They're looking for what Jesus has to offer them in our Catholic Church. So by staying true to that and very strong on that... Now, there are always gonna be situations where logistics are gonna dictate, well, maybe a school has to close.

Mm-hmm. And those are really difficult decisions but reasonable people could get around a table and discuss things and say, " this, it's not working right here," or whatever. But I think for the most part, if you have a, a strong leader there and you're really staying true to the mission and the faith you're focused on retention by meeting with your families individually when that's possible.

Right. I know in some cases it... they're so big, but I've seen a lot of school leaders and pastors where they felt enrollment was a challenge, they met individually with families, and some families that would've otherwise left they stayed, and they saw that we were on the same path, and we wanted to accomplish the same things, and we worked out a good scenario for them to be able to stay.

Yeah. I mean that's a next level tactic but so worth it, right? If that family leaves you've missed out on so many different opportunities. But if you can get them to stay you're just building, you're building off of that. The, you have the 8th graders who leave every year, and you hopefully you're bringing in the same number of kindergartners.

But if you bring, if you're leaving twice as many kids as you're bringing in, that's there's the formula for for trouble. And so- And it goes back to what we were saying earlier about that leadership. And one of the, the strengths of a good leader is having that vision of what's important. Because I know m- most principals will say, "Well, yeah, I don't have time for that," and I understand that.

I get that. A principal has to wear so many hats. Yeah. But when it comes down to it, if your challenge is enrollment and how many students we could have in the school who are learning about Jesus, who are strengthening their faith then the priority shifts. It shifts to the relationship more than some of those other things that we need to do.

So I know. I was a principal for 19 years. I know how difficult it is to say, "Oh, yeah, that's an easy... I'll go and do that, no problem." but it really if you logged all of your time and how you spent all of your time, so many of those things can be put on hold or put off a little bit in, in exchange for a half an hour conversation with some parents and things like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that, I think that's invaluable. Let's take that and let's run with that a little bit. Would you be able to share some stories of either the schools that you've been in or the schools you've worked with that are doing some really cool things? I would love to hear more about some of these, these great opportunities because that, I think that is what...

We can all use these beacons as a target, something for us to emulate or to chase, or at least to open up the ideas of what we can do in our own schools. Yeah, so when I go into the schools we have 42 schools, about 14,000 students in our diocese- Mm-hmm ... And I would obviously visit each of those schools.

And as always, you walk into those schools and you just feel the family, the sense of family and community. But in some schools more than others you'll see a real participation of the parents. Mm-hmm. Now i- it's... I started a program when I was a principal in my last school where it was a parent resource program, where we really had a lot of parents in the school throughout the school day.

Now, that on the surface will make some principals get a little bit nervous- ... and say, "Well, that's not a great thing." Yeah. Yeah. But know that we were, we had very direct guidelines of what was expected. We did look for parents or grandparents that we thought understood the big picture of what we were doing as a Catholic school and who would do it appropriately.

But we would see that, that ownership that we already have. If you think about it, one of the toughest jobs, and a lot of what I'm focusing on, are principals in Catholic schools when they start as principals. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because if you set the groundwork with relationships and all that you're going to do phenomenal things.

Mm-hmm. And but that is so difficult. You come into a parish school, for example, where there are families there that the parents have maybe grew up there, went to the school themselves. They had their children baptized at that parish. They buried their parents there. Mm-hmm. There's such ownership. Mm-hmm.

So i- it takes a, a lot of forethought of how you come into the school and you introduce yourself and you look at change and things like that. But in the same way, you have those people that you could find that have such ownership, that if you say, "Hey, you know what? We want some help here," or, "We need some assistance for a teacher reading to first graders."

Mm-hmm. And again I dealt with... I'm a parent, and I say sometimes parents can be irrational. Yeah. And that's because we love our children. I know I can be irrational because of how much I love my children as they've grown up. Mm-hmm. So I know that we have to really find the parents who are not just gonna be there for their child and just focused on whatever, but who see the big picture.

W- when you see that participation of the families that is one of the great strengths that I've seen. But then the there's nothing that could beat a, a school leader who passes on to the teachers in the school the love that they have for the kids, the care and concern they have for the kids, where the kids know it.

Yeah. And the kids are seeing a reflection of what our faith is and what our view of God is. Yeah. So that's a general and maybe obvious answer. There are a lot of other things too, of just the different offerings that you have for students who are struggling or students who are, Need more of a challenge.

A lot of things like that as well. But I think that first part of just walking in and even among our Catholic schools, feeling a different type of atmosphere of ownership and everybody churning in the same direction. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, it's definitely something, a difference you can tell. I noticed that we as the tech folks who are in and out of schools, we notice when principals-

can name the kids. They're talking to parents. Like, as you're walking through the campus, v- they're interacting with everybody by name and there's this happy, smiley time going on there. It makes a difference when they're present versus somebody who's in the office and just dealing with policy, right?

So I think that's for sure. And if you feel like, if their staff feels like they're on that, in that same kind of feel, it feels a lot more united. And I think that may be the- To me, the hardest part maybe the reason why I didn't, I never became a principal was because getting to that point of where, like, how can I unify this whole group towards this thing?

And it just felt like that was gonna be more than I could handle. But great leaders, great principals are able to do that, and it's just more than just, yeah, sure, we wanna make our kids, m- smart. We wanna give them what they need, but there's something else to that, and I think that's what you're alluding to.

Yeah. And what you wanna build up is that when a parent disagrees, for example, they might disagree with what you're d- doing and your decision, but they know they have the trust that you have it, that, that you're- Right ... there for a reason. You're the school leader. Yeah, and when you said things like being present, a- again that's in my mind a no-brainer.

Mm-hmm. But many people don't do it because- Right ... they're so caught up with all the other things, that little 10 minutes, 15 minutes at the drop-off offline in the morning makes a big difference. But the teachers also see that you're out there with them. You're not just locked in your office doing your thing while they're on the front lines of doing all the difficult things.

Mm-hmm. So that type of leadership I think is important. And having... Let's say you have eight educators around a table in a school, and you're gonna talk about any of the problems they have in that school and what you're gonna do to solve them. You have a pretty good chance that you're gonna come up with some good solutions.

Mm-hmm. A lot of times, because being a principal we are often on an island, we stay on that island, and w- we should have, for example a building leadership team- Mm-hmm ... where you have other people on the faculty and staff that are gonna get around that table with you. And I, again, I think this is an obvious thing, but I think a lot of times we don't do it.

But that gives them ownership. It also gives them responsibility where they can't just Say, a terrible way of saying it, but this is my Chicago, South Side of Chicago way of saying it. They can't just lob complaints from the cheap seats. Right. They're now there. They're in the middle of it, and they have to own where we're going.

But then when you go... A- and that goes it, for decisions you're making in the school, or if you have a team for safety, school safety. Problems I've seen the most where parents would be upset, where teachers would be upset is they go and say, "The principal made this decision, made that decision." it does the principal a huge favor and benefit in many ways for them to be able to say, "We had to group together.

We discussed this, some very good people, and this is what we came up with." it takes some of the heat off of a principal, which in my opinion, principals could use every little bit of that, that's possible. Right. But it also allows other minds to get around that table and from different perspectives and say, "You know what?

We didn't think of this, though. And what about the kindergartners here? What about the eighth graders? What about the seniors?" So in the same way as with the building leadership team with faculty when we have that opportunity with parents usually we have advisory boards being selective- Mm-hmm

in my opinion. But an advisory board who realizes they're advisory and are reminded often of what their role is. Right. But then when you go and you come out with a decision and say, "Well, the advisory board had this conversation, this discussion," it, it's so much better to be able to say that.

It's so much better for the ownership of the school by the parents- Yeah ... and to say to parents, "Other parents were a part of this conversation." Yeah. Yeah, bringing folks in and making sure that they feel the ownership of it takes that pressure off the principal, and they don't have to... It's not like they made this decision on their own in a vacuum, and now everybody has to live with it.

It's it's been brought up and developed with other folks in mind. I think that's- Any way we, a- any way we could get principals to have other people support them, because again, they have to wear so many hats. So many of them are overwhelmed. And so to give them those opportunities.

And that's one of the things I wanna do now in, in my role. But it's something I, I always looked for as a principal and as a superintendent, was always how can we provide that support that principals need? Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, I think it's the hardest part. I think it- when you get that buy-in, if you're involving the staff in those conversations at least you can start to put things together that you can build towards, right?

So I think we, we miss a lot of opportunity with, we have these WCEA and WASC type accreditation things where they go through this big report to look at the school, and they come up with lots of things. And then you get a grade and you pass, and you get six years or you get two years or whatever it is.

And then it's okay, let's shove that away until we have to do it again. And it seems to me that if you had these committees in place- Right, right ... you would have the opportunity to continually talk about those things. And what we do in our team is we've got the things of the day that we gotta get done, but we have a someday list too saying like, "This is a problem.

We can't solve it yet, but we need to be working towards this. What's one little thing we can think about that?" And we just, you keep coming back to that Post-It and adding a few more notes to it till eventually you can move it to the front and take care of it. I think a lot of that stuff just gets swept out, and you never deal with it.

But if you have these committees, you have the opportunity to talk about it and to build a plan, I think you can get the buy-in, and then eventually actually get the things done. Yeah. And I've seen one of our schools that I thought just did such a great job. They had those groups together.

They had a strong board. They had the right people helping out with the different things. And then everything that they did, they were able to say, and they would say, "This is the direct line from what we're doing here to what the mission of our school is." And that could mean we're changing the furniture in this classroom.

Mm-hmm. They would go and say, "Why? Okay, because our mission is this, and we think that answers that part of the mission by this, and this." But then once you get that going, where they ha- are a fine oiled machine, where they have a strong board, strong faculty, participation of everybody, they're going in the same direction, y- your atmosphere is different.

You don't have an adversarial atmosphere. Mm-hmm. You truly do have a team atmosphere. You have an atmosphere where if we disagree, well, that's okay. We also have the appropriateness of who makes final decisions on these things. Yeah. But yeah, I've seen that in some places, and it's rare, but I've seen that just where they're humming along, getting better and better.

And in that school that I'm referring to, they cannot put enough chairs and desks to fit the number of students from families that wanna be there. Yeah. That's a great problem to have. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely- I, it's a lot better to do that than to a lot of folks will just come up with a theme for a year out of thin air, and it's not tied to the mission, and it just feels like something they can put on letterhead and be happy with.

But that doesn't actually change anything. If it's, if you're having these conversations and all of it's rooted in that mission, it's so easy to follow Yeah, and interestingly not to harp on that school, but that school, like a number of our other schools their theme for the year often involved the students coming up with that theme, which just makes sense because why do you have a theme?

Well, you want people to be focused, and you wanna be going in a certain specific direction. But again, the students then have some level of ownership. Now, yeah, they don't Hey, you come up with all the possibilities, and you do the voting." Well, that's probably not gonna go well in a- Right ... high school or a middle school or something like that.

But where they're given here are some opportunities, 'cause that's part of the education process, too. Yeah. This is what this means. This is how we wanna look, like, what this is talking about here. Yeah, and I think even, like, bringing in a student council member at the end of a school year to allow them to come sit in on a meeting to be able to talk about that one little theme, I think is valuable.

'Cause then you can say, like, "Hey, this is at least they got their two cents in there, and there's some ownership to it, and they're part of that process." I think you, y- you're mentioning lots of different ways to get buy-in by just giving people a seat at the table. Even if it's not the table, it's a table for them to come and be a part of the process.

I think that's huge. Well, and I'll tell you just... And a principal will understand this very well. When you walk into different classrooms- Mm-hmm ... you can just see the difference. It's such a cool job as a principal to go into the different classrooms and see all the awesome things they're doing, and the character of each classroom and teacher and all that.

Well, in the same way, one of the, my favorite parts of my job as a superintendent was to go into the different schools and see that. Mm-hmm. And I would sit down this... My last year, I sat down with students from each school. Y- when I would visit a school, I'd sit down with eight, 10 students, and we would just talk about different things about the school.

And wow, could you learn so much about the school and what the school is accomplishing through those young people. One school I'm thinking of in particular is St. Agnes. They... It was different than any other conversation with their students. It was a K to eight school, but you would think you were talking to juniors and seniors in high school who had things mapped out of, "Oh, I'm going to college," or, "I'm doing this," or, "I'm doing that."

And they had a program that was specifically building leadership school skills- in their students. And those students that I met with, I was just blown away, saying, "My gosh, this..." y- you feel good as a superintendent saying, " if these are the students that are coming out of our schools and going to impact the world around them we could feel very proud about that."

And that was an example in a school, again, of that ownership with these students of, "This is your school. This is your education." And they had specific things that they focused on all throughout the school year that, that was mainly about leadership. And it was a beautiful thing.

Oh, that sounds amazing. If you were, If the principals that are listening to this podcast today and they're thinking about how they could s- possibly start this, do you have, like, a piece of advice to give them on that first step towards, you know, putting this all together? Yeah, I mean, there are some groups out there, some programs out there that, that work specifically on leadership.

But I think it's never just the program that's doing it, right? So you have the- Mm-hmm ... faculty and the staff a- that, that sits down and says, "This is something we're gonna be committed to." And we all know, I mean, I know people of my vintage sit around a table and talk about the woes of today and-

what we wish the students, the children were able to do, and how ca- they can't do this or don't do that. But to talk about what those skills are that everybody should have. When a student graduates eighth grade of our school, from our school, or high school- Mm-hmm ... senior year, when they graduate, we want them to be able to do this.

And then sit down and say, "Okay, what does that mean for every aspect of our school to reflect that?" Yeah. Now, there are some very good programs out there, Leader in Me and things like that, that focus on giving the school the tools to say, "Here are things that you work on. Here are leadership skills.

Here are ways that you could get the students actively involved in an appropriate way that will help build these skills," things like that. So that's just off the top of my head, that's one really good example. Yeah. I'm always thinking about the the high schools come to pitch the eighth graders about joining their school, and they all play, like, this three-minute video about what does it mean to come to our high school, right?

And I always wish that our K through eight schools would put that video together of, like, this is what it means when you leave here. Mm-hmm. Like this is an example of what you will become when you're a part of this community. And I think putting that together, as you're saying, discussing that, what do those things look like, and then can we build back from there, is...

it would be a very good thing to have, not to mention a great piece of marketing collateral. Yeah, absolutely. And being able to say to parents, "This is what we're about." I mean, we've had situations in schools where it just came to the conclusion that the school and the family w- were not turning in the same direction, and how valuable and important that was.

Mm-hmm. And in some cases we were able to hash that out and figure it out to say, "This is where we're heading and what we want to accomplish in our school community, and we all need to be on the same page." We've seen some beautiful things happen. But we also know we, we can't be so beholden to the bottom line and just numbers.

It really is our mission, and we have to make sure that our students, our families, our faculty and staff members, and especially our school leader understands that mission. The, the principal is the keeper of that mission. When he or she starts- what that mission is in the school, if they are there five years, 10 years they are to protect that mission and to make sure that it's as strong as ever when they move on from that position.

Yeah. So it's, once again, chasing the mission. Yes. First making sure that you, everyone feels good in that mission, but then that's what we're after. Makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. Pretty simple. So as we kinda wrap up here can you tell us more about what you're doing now? 'Cause you're no longer the superintendent of schools.

Now you're helping schools on a, a different level. Yeah. So I look at my time, as I said, 19 years as a principal in a Catholic school, seven years as a superintendent in a Catholic diocese. And I have a passion for a couple of things. Our Catholic faith, first and foremost, and I have a passion for Catholic school leadership.

And I think I know what I did well. I definitely know what I did poorly. Mm-hmm. And I'm looking now at a way that I could support principals and in, in a one particular way I'm supporting diocesan school offices. I'm working with the Archdiocese of Omaha to support them. Because we have such an awesome responsibility, we wear so many hats, and no one person could do it alone.

Our principals need somebody to walk alongside them with them, not that they don't know what they're doing, they do, but you need those people that could think through things and support them. So many principals and superintendents, associate superintendents say, "Man, I've wanted to do this and I just never could get it accomplished."

Mm-hmm. "Because I have I'm putting out fires all the time," and that's the most common thing that I hear. And so Seton Educational Services is meant to be there as a behind the scenes person, me in particular- Mm-hmm ... With my experience as a principal and superintendent, to say, "I wanna help you to be able to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish, but you can't because you're understaffed."

And even if you're not understaffed, the amount of responsibilities that you have is sometimes, in most of our schools n- i- impossible for any one person to do. Mm-hmm. So I've helped to build a leadership program for the Archdiocese of Omaha that they could use as a resource for their principals.

And I've done that for first and second year principals, and then we have something for experienced principals. And I'm also building a resource library for principals. It's a Catholic school principal codex- Mm-hmm ... That will... It just touches on these different topics. It really boils down to all of the research that's done on a topic like enrollment struggles- Mm-hmm

and all that. It talks about where this research came from, but then it has some practical steps of what principals can do in order to respond to that. So enrollment. It has things about pastor- Principal relationship, which is so important- Mm-hmm ... and something as a superintendent I spent a lot of time on.

I'll just leave it at that. Mm-hmm. And all different things that you could imagine, and you know that a principal experiences. There are just supports to help them to be able to do it effectively. But I also like the idea that you could have somebody who is in that chair and a lot of times at your beck and call to help you with the things that are important to you.

And I have some of the, the experience and resources to be able to support a principal now, since that's what I focus on 100% of the time. Wow. That sounds like a lot of resources. How would somebody find you or those resources? Well, the website I have is setoned.org. Seton like Elizabeth Ann Seton, S-E-T-O-N-E-D.org.

And then my email address is [e-mail]. Vcascone. My last name is C-A-S-C-O-N-E. And it's just I love talking about Catholic school leadership. I love talking about what makes for successful Catholic schools. And I love working with people around the country to help support them that they, so they can do that important work they're doing on the front lines.

Yeah. Well we'll definitely drop those two things in the show notes. I appreciate our time today. Thank you so much, Vince, for sharing your stories and your expertise. It's nice to see that you're still doing it. Even after being a principal, being a superintendent, you're, you just can't get yourself out of the schools 'cause you love them so much.

Well, and I'll tell you, I, I love what you're doing, Thomas, where this is another opportunity where principals could go and in sorts have someone else around the table having these conversations and these discussions. It's so needed, whether it's a podcast or something that I'm doing or whatever.

So thank you so much for allowing me to be on here and for the ministry that you have serving our Catholic school leaders. Well, I appreciate that. We'll keep it going. All right. Great. Thank you. All right. Have a good day. You too.