The 3-minute interview: Sister John Francis Schilling

Dave Carey, The Examiner
January 7, 2008

Since 1984 Sister John Francis Schilling has been making a difference in Baltimore City as part of St. Frances Academy. Schilling started as an English teacher and counselor, but was named principal and president in 1993 before taking on the role of full-time president in 2005. Under her administration, the school’s enrollment has grown from 135 to more than 340. The graduate of Canisius College in New York also helped oversee the fundraising and construction of the school’s $5.4 million, 35,000-square-foot gym and community center.

What projects are you working on now?

A pastoral counseling program. About a third of our kids in school are in weekly therapy. My second degree is in counseling. I think this makes us unique, and this year we have a partnership with two Baltimore high schools [Baltimore Freedom Academy and Academy for College and Career Exploration] as part of an initiative where funders want us to mentor and train pastoral counselors for these two schools. We do all the supervision and training for them. We are doing research so that we have data that will prove that when you deal with the kids’ problems directly and help them sort through their issues, academics increase and their problems go down.

You are a huge sports fan and have your own basketball blog at www.sfacademy.org/resources/blogs. Why the emphasis on athletics?

It goes back to when I played basketball in high school and college. My father was a big athlete and was the New York state pingpong champion. When I came to St. Frances, our basketball team was playing in the Catholic Youth Organization and our girls only had a junior varsity team. Since then we have grown and gotten baseball, lacrosse, volleyball, tennis, track and golf. It’s just gotten very, very big, and it’s important so many kids have opportunities to do different things, compete and learn something.