An Insight into Newport Central Catholic and Newport Independent Schools

Because I am from Boone County, I have witnessed Newport's education system to some degree. As I mentioned earlier, I played basketball against Newport Intermediate, and I, a sheltered and private-Catholic-school-educated eleven year old, was surprised by the amount of cursing and by the immense physicality of these girls. As a result of this experience and the research I found about the very low ranking of the Newport Independent School System, I wanted to learn about Newport Central Catholic, a private Catholic school that is a part of the same diocese as my high school. This school specifically interested me because I was curious how the landscape of being a Catholic school and the landscape of Newport has shaped its students differently than those at my high school and those at Newport Independent School System. 

To learn about the Newport Central Catholic, I interviewed a current first year student attending Northern Kentucky University who graduated from NCC last May. The student, who I will keep anonymous, also had an almost entirely private Catholic education like me; he attended St. Joseph Coldspring for grade school and NCC for high school. Even though he lives in Wilder, he is very familiar with the Newport area because of the closeness of his home to the city and because of his high school experience and friends. Newport has given him many fond memories: hanging out with friends, visiting the Levee, going to school; he, however, does not believe the city has shaped his identity much.

Regarding his education at Newport Central Catholic, he does not believe that NCC prepared him well for college since it failed to teach him what college would be like; regardless of this belief, as he stated, NCC taught him how to be responsible and helped him earn many scholarships. This reminded me of a friend from high school whose sister graduated from NCC and felt unprepared for college. That is why my friend attended my high school because she wanted to be challenged, so it was strange hearing the correlation between these two people's experiences. 

At NCC, many of his friends lived in Newport, and they had a different lifestyle than him because of this landscape. Unlike my interviewee who grew up in a suburban area outside of Newport, his friends and classmates grew up in closely knitted houses that were ruled by basic city streets. Because of this difference, he stated that they grew up walking to places instead of driving to them and mainly found entertainment indoors. In addition, despite the expensiveness of private schooling, he stated that 50 percent of the students lived in less fortunate circumstances and were on student assistance. Thus, just like the Newport Independent School System, many of the students experience difficulties financially, but, unlike Newport Independent, a large majority of graduates, 96 percent, from NCC went to college.

Regardless of the fact that the interviewee believes that NCC did not prepare him well for college and has a decent population of those needing financial assistance, NCC is, at the very least, getting a decent amount of graduates into college. Newport Independent School System, thus, is most likely struggling from internal conflicts within homes. Similarly, the interviewee discussed how he did extracurriculars with students from Newport Independent and was told by a second grader the number of weapons within her home. This reminded me of when I completed a service opportunity with UpSpring, which serves girls experiencing homelessness at Newport , and there was 13 of them experiencing homelessness. 

Thus, perhaps there is a strong correlation between the landscape of Newport and the lack of preparation for college, but, at the end of the day, NCC is not struggling as much as Newport Independent due to its better family-home conditions.