New Structural Changes at St. Vincent Pallotti High School
For the last year, Jeff Palumbo was planning on relinquishing one of his job titles. The long-time St. Vincent Pallotti High School principal and president officially handed over the principal position to Catherine Edwards on July 1. The restructuring move came at the urging of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and the Association of Independent Maryland Schools, the two organizations responsible for the accreditation of Pallotti High School. Palumbo admits that he was reluctant at first to make the shift, particularly because he enjoys the daily interactions with students that the role of the principal allows.
But new principal Catherine Edwards is no stranger to Pallotti, having served previously as dean of students and then assistant principal. She credits her parents with inspiring her career in education. Edwards’ father was a professor and administrator at the University of Notre Dame, and her mother was a high school math teacher. After she herself graduated from Notre Dame, Edwards took a position in the admissions department of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Upon her father’s suggestion, she began a master’s degree program at CUA and eventually completed her M.A. in Guidance and Counseling. She then took a job as a school counselor at the Academy of the Holy Cross. Eventually, she stepped away from paid employment to raise a family but still kept an active presence in education by working as a volunteer at her children’s schools. When her youngest started kindergarten, Edwards became an administrator for a non-profit animal rescue. After six years in that position, Edwards returned to education.
Edwards joined the staff of Pallotti in 2018. Early on as dean of students, Edwards decided to change the uniform to reflect the college preparatory focus of the school. Edwards laughed as she recalled that the uniform company representative told her that “changing the uniform of a school was just about as difficult as changing the religion of a school.” But Edwards moved forward with the change anyway. Edwards also worked to revitalize the student government association.
Edwards assumed the position of assistant principal not long after she started as dean. When asked what she enjoys most about the job, she said that interacting with teenagers on a daily basis brings her joy, noting that she likes being a supportive and trustworthy adult in their lives.
Palumbo served at Pallotti as both principal and president for 14 years. Originally a business owner, Palumbo says he started his career in education later in life. After health issues made it difficult for him to run his own business, Palumbo found himself coaching baseball at Bowie State University. Former DeMatha principal John Moylan contacted Palumbo and hired him to teach business. And so began a career in education and administration that eventually landed Palumbo as principal and president of Pallotti High School in 2012.
Palumbo sees the shift in his responsibilities, away from the role of principal and focusing solely on being president, as an opportunity to increase Pallotti’s competitive edge in the DMV area.
“Here I can get in my car, and in forty-five minutes, I can be at ten Catholic schools and twenty private schools. So it’s very competitive here, and a lot of schools are building college campuses basically, so in order to be able to keep tuition down and be competitive, we thought we needed to create this new structure, and my responsibilities will be dealing more with advancement.”
Tuition increases, Palumbo noted, are hard on families. To keep tuition down, he will be working to bring in more funds from other sources. The school is currently wrapping up a capital campaign that was temporarily sidelined during the Covid-19 pandemic. Included in that capital campaign are multiple renovation projects.
“One of the things that I’m most proud of are some of the programs that we started,” Palumbo said, referring to the arts academy. “I see a lot of kids who love the arts, music, dance—but [are] not real big fans of actual school, so we created this program for those kids [so] that they get to do what they love to do every day along with the English and the religion…but it turned out that some of our best students also love art.” Now roughly 24 percent of the student body participates in the arts academy, so the school is working toward a new performing arts center to move the arts academy out of the old convent building.
Palumbo also oversaw the creation of a four-year engineering program and a robotics lab. He hopes to be able to work more toward getting the word out about these programs, now that he has relinquished the role of principal.
“I like seeing kids trying new things and finding out what they like to do, what they are good at.” As full-time president, Palumbo hopes to see more of that.
Caitlin Lewis holds a Master’s Degree in Education from Covenant College. She worked as a high school English teacher both in the U.S. and Greece, but currently works at home raising her four children and writing her column.
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