St. Bernadette principal getting national award

By William T. Clew | The Catholic Free Press

NORTHBOROUGH - This time it is the principal of St. Bernadette Elementary School who is getting national recognition.

Deborah C. O’Neil will receive a 2019 Lead. Learn. Proclaim. Award from the National Catholic Educational Association.

The award will be presented during the NCEA convention and expo April 23-25 in Chicago. She is one of 27, and the only one from New England, chosen from among more than 150,000 teachers and administrators, diocesan leaders and organizations dedicated to the nation’s Catholic schools, according to an NCEA press release. 

The award is made each year to honor those “whose ministry is Catholic school education and who have demonstrated a strong Catholic educational philosophy as well as exceptional efforts, dedication and achievements,” the NCEA said in the release.

“The LLP award is a celebration of all that is good in Catholic schools. Our awardees are those individuals whose dedication, commitment, enthusiasm and care help to build dynamic communities where students are challenged and inspired to explore, to enjoy and to reach their potential as young people of faith and endless possibilities,” said Barbara McGraw Edmondson, NCEA chief leadership and program officer.

Mrs. O’Neil is the second faculty member at St. Bernadette School to receive the Lead. Learn. Proclaim. Award. Last year, Mary Anne Jezierski was honored. She is a social studies teacher, extended day program director and international student coordinator at St. Bernadette. 

She nominated Mrs. O’Neil for this year’s award. The nomination was approved by diocesan Superintendent of Schools David Perda and endorsed by teachers and other members of the St. Bernadette community. 

Mrs. O’Neil said she feels both “honored and humbled” by her selection. She said she is “just someone who was nominated.” There are many other people in the diocese and at school who deserve the award, she said. 

“They make me look like I know what I’m doing,” she said with a smile.

St. Bernadette School “provides a strong academic program always rooted in faith,” she said. She praised the faculty and  parents who “help students to do their best. It takes a whole team, not just one person.”

Mrs. O’Neil has been principal of St. Bernadette since 2005. In 2014 the school received a U.S. Department of Education National Blue Ribbon  award, the first school in the Worcester Diocese so honored. The award honors schools in which the student body is in the top 20th percentile academically for five years. St. Bernadette students were in the top 15th percentile for five years, she said.

Nationally, 337 schools were recognized as National Blue Ribbon Schools for 2014 based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups. St. Bernadette School was one of only 50 non-public schools in the nation and the only non-public school in New England to receive the honor. It was recognized as an “Exemplary High Performing School.” 

Mrs. O’Neil, a convert to Catholicism, went to public schools in Worcester. When she was a student at Woodland Preparatory School, one of the city’s top academic schools, her father told her that he wanted her to go to Sacred Heart Academy when she graduated.

She wanted to follow her classmates to South High School, she said, so she deliberately failed the entrance examination for Sacred Heart. 

 Her father, Henry D. Fornier, was a Navy veteran who had survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and made it through World War II.  A little rebellion by his daughter didn’t present a major problem. He made a phone call, explained the situation and his daughter, after graduating from Woodland, enrolled at Sacred Heart Academy. She told the audience at the Adopt-A-Student dinner last Thursday that the academy told her father that she would be the first to receive an acceptance letter.

It changed her life, she said. On her first day of classes Sister Cecilia Joseph, a Sister of St. Joseph, promised to pray for her conversion, Mrs. O’Neil said. According to a biographical sketch, “the Holy Spirit and Sister’s prayers were powerful and Deborah was baptized in the former St. Anne Church and received her first Communion at the school’s First Friday Mass.”

At Sacred Heart she also met a young man named Michael O’Neil whom she eventually married. They have two children and five grandchildren.

Mrs. O’Neil holds a bachelor’s degree in history/secondary education from the College of the Elms, a master’s degree in educational administration  from UMass Lowell; certification by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and has served, and continues to serve, on committees and commissions in the Boston Archdiocese and Worcester Diocese and as a collaborator and mentor to principals in both dioceses. 

She taught at the Children’s House Montessori School,  Chelmsford, from 1982 to 1985 and at St. Margaret School, Lowell, from 1985 to 1992. She was principal at St. Peter School, Cambridge, from 1992 to 2005, when she was named principal at St. Bernadette.