The Alliance of Mission District Catholic Schools continues the over 150–year history of providing quality Catholic education for the children of the Mission District. Today, however, the families of the Mission District struggle to afford living in San Francisco and cover the cost of tuition for a Mission District Catholic school ($3800-4100 per student; actual per pupil cost is $6100). For two years the Department of Catholic Schools, Archdiocese of San Francisco, examined the “signs of the times” in San Francisco’s multi–cultural Mission District which were affecting Catholic elementary schools: the downturn of the economy, the flight of SF families from the City, the decreasing enrollments in the Mission District schools, the increasing need for tuition assistance, the effects of the economy on the operating budgets of the schools, the growing ethnic and cultural diversity among school families. As a result of this examination, the Department of Catholic Schools and Cardinal William Levada chose, in 2005, to establish the AMDCS as a response to these alarming “signs of the times” which were threatening the survival of the Mission District Catholic schools.

The AMDCS began in July 2005. Six of the thirteen Mission District Catholic elementary schools (School of the Epiphany, Mission Dolores, St. Anthony–IC, St. James, St. Elizabeth and St. Finn Barr) chose to enter the Alliance at this beginning stage and to work together to establish its collaborative policies, programs, and procedures. The Alliance of Mission District Catholic Schools creates an alternative model of Catholic education and governance. The AMDCS model draws from the seven- year success of the model of the Center City Consortium in Washington D. C. The AMDCS model changes the traditionally separate, territorial, and competitive parochial system to a new governance structure which through which the Alliance (rather than the parish) operates the schools.

In the Fall 2005 the AMDCS saw the need to embark on a Strategic Planning/Market Research and Planning process. Its leadership realized that many continuing changes in the Mission District, e.g.— in population, in ethnicity, in cost of living, and with changing images of Catholic — presented a new reality for marketing Catholic education; the leaders desired to create a “road map” to plan the way forward. To address that need, the AMDCS selected Catholic Education Consulting Services (CECS) to lead the strategic/marketing planning process. CECS began its work with the AMDCS in Spring 2006.