About Blue Streak

While traveling to the Mission in San Diego, Dr. McDonald began praying, asking God how she was going to open seven closed Catholic schools. It would take nothing short of a miracle, she thought.

An anonymous group of mostly Protestant donors had approached Bishop Terry Steib with the money to begin reopening those inner-city Memphis Catholic Schools. He agreed and called them the Jubilee Schools because the year was approaching 2000, and "Jubilee" is a biblical term, meaning “mercy for the poor". The Bishop gave Catholic School Superintendent, Dr. Mary McDonald, the charge of operating and staffing the schools. The enormity of the task was overwhelming.

During Mary’s seminar at the Mission, she noticed a prominently positioned crucifix hanging on the Mission wall. The crucifix, however, had no arms! The priest of the mission told the story that he had searched diligently for someone skilled enough to fix this life-size crucifix, but there was no one qualified for such a delicate, significant task. Then, he realized that there was a purpose for those arms not to be on Christ. WE are the arms of Christ and are to go out into the world to be his arms and carry out his mission!

Obviously, Mary was very moved by this story, but had forgotten about it when she returned to Memphis and the job of opening the first Jubilee School, Holy Names, began. With the Holy Names principal at the time, Di Aur, Mary was going through old items stored in the attic, and almost fainted when she saw an object leaning against the attic wall! It was a life-size crucifix, or statue of Jesus – WITH NO ARMS! At that moment, she realized that God was in the midst of The Jubilee Schools, guiding her throughout that endeavor. The crucifix of Jesus with no arms, is now hanging proudly in the main hall of Holy Names to always remind us that we are truly the ARMS of CHRIST!

That was around the year 2000 and there were about 26 kindergartners in the Jubilee Schools at that time. Now, there are 8 total Jubilee Schools and approximately 1300 students are enrolled. The thrilling news is that most of these children are reading at or above their grade level after one year of Jubilee School attendance and they are out-performing their neighboring public schools in reading and math. Amazingly, this is even despite the fact that most of the children’s families are well below the national poverty level!

Each child pays some amount of the $4000 annual tuition, based on a sliding scale. Almost all of the children receive some type of tuition assistance. And that’s where Blue Streak Scholarship Fund comes in. We have over 600 volunteers and are growing rapidly and we want your help!

There are many opportunities for you to get involved in Blue Streak, most importantly as a Scholarship Captain, to help raise a scholarship for a child to receive a quality, Catholic education and positively impact a child's, and thus Memphis's future. I would love for you to take a tour of one, or all, of the Jubilee schools! You can set that up easily by calling or emailng me.

Our Mission at Blue Streak is to provide financial support to the Jubilee Schools and tuition assistance to the Jubilee Students. Our Vision is to break the cycle of poverty by investing in children's education.

And our Passion is carrying out God's work by bringing together people of all faiths to create a better future for the less fortunate of Memphis.

Thanks for what you have done for Blue Streak, and God Bless You!

Jan Brucker
Director