The Good Shepherd School to add second campus

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

A second campus of The Good Shepherd Nativity School (GSS) will open in the city’s Desire-Florida neighborhood in the fall of 2022, providing yet another location at which low-income families can access the same proven model of year-round, tuition-free Catholic education that has served children for more than two decades.

The new school, to be located at 3601 Desire Pkwy., will offer kindergarten-only in its first year and grow annually until it reaches its full complement of grades K-7. To distinguish it from the original Good Shepherd School at 1839 Agriculture St., it will be called “The Good Shepherd School-Giving Hope Campus,” a nod to its creation through a partnership between The Good Shepherd School and the non-profit Giving Hope Foundation.

One step at a time

“The fact that (The Good Shepherd School) is a slow-growth model gives you time to really get kids in at an early age – to build those literacy skills and keep building on them into the next year,” said Thomas Moran, GSS president and CEO, looking back at his school’s stellar record of helping children at or below the poverty line to find success in high school and beyond. There have been 189 graduates to date.

“It’s so much more than a school – it’s nourishing the soul, nourishing the mind and nourishing the heart,” Moran said. “The most rewarding thing is when you see that little 4- or 5-year-old, and you close your eyes and fast forward. That’s the young man or the young woman who will be in medical school, in law school, who’s a teacher, who's a banker.”

To be part of hub of vitality

The Giving Hope Foundation, a non-profit established in 2012 by car dealer and philanthropist Troy Duhon and his wife Tracy, has purchased 25,000-square-feet of modular classrooms, offices and common areas to house the new facility and is the owner of land on which it will sit. Significantly, the new elementary school will be located across the street from the foundation’s existing Giving Hope Community Center, which offers after-school programming, summer camps, wellness and educational opportunities for all ages, and job training, including a truck-driving school at which students can earn their commercial driver’s license.

The Daughters of Charity operate a health clinic in the vicinity, and an on-site day-care/preschool program called “Kids of Excellence,” ranked among the top 10 of its kind in Louisiana, will be a “natural feeder” into the new K-7 program and save GSS-Giving Hope the cost of adding pre-kindergarten, Moran said. The community center’s gym, afterschool and summer programs also will be available to the GSS-Giving Hope students through a user agreement between the two entities, Moran added.

“Carver High School is right down the street, but there are no real elementary schools of any type in that area,” he said. “People will be able to literally walk to school from that community, drop their child at a faith-based school and go across the street for job training.”

GSS-Giving Hope will occupy two-thirds of a three-acre parcel of land; the remaining third will be dedicated to a new venture made possible by the Giving Hope Foundation: Thrive New Orleans, the non-profit that operates day-to-day programming at the community center, will open a “green infrastructure” academy dedicated to training locals in fields such as aquaculture, stormwater management, green building codes and horticulture. The academy also will serve as an educational resource for GSS-Giving Hope students, particularly in the STEM fields, Moran said.

Successful alumni

Since opening at its original CBD campus on Baronne Street in 2001 – and now educating 275 students in grades pre-K through 7 in a spacious new school building on Agriculture Street – GSS is guided by the mission of its founder, Jesuit Father Harry Tompson: Every child, regardless of their family’s financial situation, deserves the chance to receive a top-notch education.

Currently, 122 graduates of GSS are thriving academically at private, public, charter and 16 local Catholic schools, including St. Augustine, Jesuit, Brother Martin, Archbishop Rummel, St. Katharine Drexel, Cabrini, St. Mary's Academy, Mount Carmel Academy and De La Salle.

The elementary school, which tracks and assists its alumni throughout their educational careers, also has begun counting its first college graduates, currently numbering 13 young men and women who hold a wide range of degrees (those ranks include medical student Andrew Joseph, pictured at right, following his White Coat Ceremony in 2020). Four additional GSS graduates will complete their college degrees by December, with more than 30 others on the horizon, Moran said.

Students, families embraced

GSS-Giving Hope, which will have a separate faculty from the Agriculture Street campus but share some of the same administrative staff, will operate on the same financial structure that has served GSS families for two decades: Each student’s tuition will be completely funded, with 60% provided by the state voucher program and the remaining funds raised by the school and its growing network of supporters.

Its holistic approach includes an extended school day, the provision of breakfast, lunch and dinner each weekday and year-round instruction, including a six-week summer program in which the youngsters are immersed in a mix of academics, creative arts and athletics.

“It’s a safe environment (and the students) have somewhere to go – their parents are able to continue working without worrying about where their children will be during the summer,” said Moran, noting that the GSS is “a place of comfort” that provides wrap-around services for families whose struggles might include under-employment and food insecurity.

“I don't like the word ‘poverty’ because of the negative connotations,” Moran said. “Our families have so many blessings in terms of their work ethic and their faith. When they come here, it’s not just the student who comes here, it’s the whole family who comes here. They know somebody in this building knows their story and is there to help.

“Our parents are utilizing the resources we have as much as our kids are and saying, ‘How can I, as a parent, be there for my child? How can I learn more things that can help us as a family?’” 

Similar missions

Duhon, a 1986 graduate of Archbishop Shaw, said his passion for service was ignited after Hurricane Katrina, when he complained to his father about the exodus of skilled workers to other states following the storm. The elder Duhon looked his son squarely in the eye and asked him, “What are you going to do about it?”

Since that time, Troy and Tracy Duhon’s philanthropic works have included the construction of eight orphanages – most recently in the Dominican Republic and South Africa – and building 100 water wells in Pakistan.

Locally, the Duhons have built retreat centers and shelters for victims of homelessness and domestic violence, a 60-acre drug rehabilitation center, and “Women of Hope,” the latter of which has funded nearly 20 special-needs adoptions to date. The foundation’s massive food pantry effort is on track to distribute $5 million in groceries this year – including salvaged foodstuffs that otherwise would have been discarded by grocery stores. Two Giving Hope kitchens prepare 1,100 daily hot meals for local elderly, and for the last 12 years, the Duhons have given a new car to local graduating seniors who have posted perfect attendance during their high school years.

Troy Duhon became acquainted with GSS’s mission in 2018, the year he and his wife were contestants in the school’s annual “Dancing with the Stars” fundraiser. In turn, Moran learned about Duhon’s outreach to the underserved at the Giving Hope Community Center and of his dream to erect an elementary school on the vacant parcel of land across the street.

“I was impressed, because when you take a child who historically never had the chance at a good education and you give them hope – that resonated with me and my wife,” said Duhon, who recalled seeing “the joy on the kids’ faces” on his first tour of the school. “We saw the incredible work being done to change lives for generations to come – they were going to go off to be great citizens, because somebody took a chance on their education.”

So, when Duhon called Moran a little over a year ago to report that he had an opportunity to purchase some well-made modular buildings from a local university, plans for the GSS Giving Hope project gained steam.

“It is great to build an orphanage, I mean, we built one in India, and we have 18 kids in college (there) that we fund, and that’s great,” Duhon said. “But to do something in the Ninth Ward, in my backyard, in an area that has suffered so much generation after generation – to take that young child and show the rest of the world that he’s just as good as anybody else.

“I may not see the proof until 20 years from now, but to track these kids through society excites me like you wouldn't believe, because we're going to take a young child who’s coming from a very low-income situation, and we're going to give them an education. And, all of a sudden, he is going to be an asset to this community.”

For application information on GSS-Giving Hope, visit www.thegoodshepherdschool.org. For more on the Giving Hope Foundation, visit www.givinghopenola.org.
 
GSS’s annual gala-fundraiser will make its return Dec. 9 at The Cannery, 3803 Toulouse St., New Orleans. “Celebrating the Stars” will feature musical guests Kermit Ruffins and Amanda Shaw, food from Johnny Sanchez, Dooky Chase’s and Bacchanal restaurants, choreographers and dancers from the past six “Dancing with the Stars” galas, and video vignettes from GSS graduates. The patron party will begin at 6:30 p.m. and the main event at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, which include an open bar and unlimited food, start at $125. A limited number of sponsorships are available. For more, visit https://www.thegoodshepherdschool.org/celebrating-the-stars-2021.html.

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