Saying goodbye to St. Agnes

Sister Kathleen Carlin is leaving her position as principal of St. Agnes Cathedral School, a job she has held for nearly 40 years.

When she first started, people told her she wasn’t going to last.

“My first year, I … tried to do too much too soon,” Carlin recalled. She had been a guidance counselor at the school for three years before she was made principal, and she thought those three years of observing the ins and outs of St. Agnes had prepared her for the job. “But I learned a big lesson,” she said. “And I always tell anybody going into this kind of a job to sit back and observe.”

Carlin and Helen Newman, who has been her co-principal and administrative partner for decades, will both leave St. Agnes on Aug. 31. Newman came to the school in 1980 as a sixth-grade social studies teacher. A year later, she was named assistant principal.

Over the years, she and Carlin grew close and became fast friends, and the line between principal and assistant principal blurred. In 1999, Newman was named the school’s co-principal.

It’s a model that is unique to St. Agnes, and it will come to an end when Carlin and Newman depart.

The pair decided to leave at the same time, a move that took some by surprise. “You want to go out at the top of your game,” said Newman. “And I think now’s the time. I think people were shocked that both of us were going at the same time. But it would just be hard to start with somebody new, for either of us.”

The school, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in the 2017-18 school year, has survived longer than many other Catholic schools on Long Island. Over the years, Carlin and Newman said, they have seen many changes come to the school. The enrollment has decreased, although St. Agnes’s numbers are higher than most — it currently has more than 700 students. But the most striking changes are some of the most obvious: the changes to the building, and the integration of technology into the classroom.

“The building has been modified and enhanced,” Carlin said. “We built rooms inside the building. And we have this Field of Dreams, as we call it,” she added, referring to the field adjacent to the school. “I think the plant has improved tremendously.”

“Every single classroom having a Smartboard is almost passé,” Newman added. “The entire building went from being totally wired to now totally wireless. Going to individual devices for specific grades. I think technology has been a major change.”

During their tenure, the school also greatly expanded what it offered middle-year students. Students often left once they reached seventh grade because they wanted to go to schools with more activities and sports.

“So we established a very, almost professional drama program,” Carlin said. “And then we also started a middle-level sports program. So we have a variety of sports. It really has helped us.”

Both said they would miss the children most. St. Agnes is unique in that it has students in kindergarten through eighth grade all in the same building. But it’s heartwarming, they said, to see the older kids mentor the younger ones, and to see the younger students look up to the older ones.

As the year wound down, Carlin and Newman prepared to move out, an experience they described as strange and scary. Neither has any immediate plans for her retirement. “Maybe down the line, maybe I’ll do some work with new teachers,” Newman said. “Supervising or whatever. And Sister Kathy is great with standardized testing, so maybe she’ll do some consulting.”

Carlin laughed at that. “I’m not doing anything for a while,” she said. “My big thing is not getting up at 6 in the morning. I’m hoping to spend more time on the beach. And a lot of reading.”