After serving for four years as associate director for elementary schools for the diocese, Donna Bacsik began to miss the things she valued most in her 30-plus year career as a teacher and administrator, and that was working directly with parents, teachers and most especially the students.
Returning this year to Our Lady of Sorrows School, Hamilton, as principal, Bacsik said, “The only reason why I came back was the kids.”
“I missed working with the kids,” said Bacsik, who was principal there from 2004 to 2006.
Bacsik, who holds a bachelor’s degree in English Education from Douglas College at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, a master’s degree and principal certification from The College of New Jersey, Ewing, and a reading specialist certificate for grades K-3, beams as she talks about how education has been her “life’s passion.”
Prior to her six years in Catholic education, the two she spent at Our Lady of Sorrows and four in the Office of Catholic Schools, she spent 30 years with the Hamilton Township School District – 20 as a teacher and 10 in administration as vice principal and principal.
“I always tell people that I would never say that Catholic schools are better because there are dedicated people working in the public schools,” she said. “What I would say is that we are different because we can teach in a faith-filled environment. We can teach our faith in every subject. In Catholic education, our ‘3Rs’ are respect, reverence and responsibility.” Bacsik, who is the mother of three children; Dianne, David and Danielle, and a member of Sts. Francis and Clare Parish, Florence Township, happily returned to Our Lady of Sorrows School July 1 and has since been getting ready to welcome 239 students on the first day of school.
She’s been occupied with hiring an additional fourth-grade teacher because the enrollment in that class climbed to 34. With the approval and “generous spirit” of Msgr. Thomas N. Gervasio, pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows-St. Anthony Parish, “he’s allowing me to split the class and hire another teacher. That’s wonderful that we’re growing to the point that one of our grade levels” can have two classes.
She’s also gathering information on how to establish “professional learning communities” which is the “new buzz word in education and involves teachers teaching each other and discussing how to improve teaching and learning among the students.”
Bacsik wants to have faculty members proficiently trained in using smart boards because “they are dealing with a technological, savvy, hands-on visual clientele,” she said of the students, and smart boards are a very helpful learning tool.
Acknowledging her work with the diocese, Bacsik saluted her colleagues in the Office of Catholic Schools and the chance to “meet and network with the leadership in our Catholic schools across the diocese.”
“Every single Catholic school principal I worked with is a dedicated, hard-working individual just striving to keep his or her schools vibrant and to provide the best Catholic education they can,” she said.
Now back among the ranks as a Catholic school principal, Bacsik said, “I feel like I’ve come home.”
“I have been so warmly embraced by the parents and teachers. They are making it very easy for me to resume my responsibilities here at Our Lady of Sorrows,” she said, then added that as principal, she “feels an awesome responsibility to the parents because they are sending us their most precious possessions – their children.”
“Though we will teach them their lessons every day, we have the unique opportunity to develop not just their minds and bodies, but their hearts and souls as well,” she said. “To me, that’s what Catholic education is all about.”
