At the same time that Donald Trump moved into the Oval office for a second time, John Moran moved into a different kind of presidential office: the St. Francis Catholic High School kind.
After St. Francis president Fadia Desmond stepped down to take a job in Los Angeles at the end of the 2024-25 school year, the search began for a new president. The St. Francis president must uphold the “five F’s” – faith, finance, facilities, fundraising and fun.
John Moran was elected president of St. Francis this past summer and officially began working at the beginning of July. Moran was raised Catholic and tries to follow Catholic principles both in his everyday life and how he serves the St. Francis community.
“I’m in charge of faith formation here,” Moran said. “I’m the spiritual officer at the school. That doesn’t mean I’m a priest, but it does mean that I should model and emulate the qualities of Christ to every young woman here and everyone in the community. I am regularly referring to scripture or the teachings of Jesus.”
Moran graduated from the University of Massachusetts, completed a master’s in green education from Harvard (a program focused on helping develop teaching methods to discuss environmental issues in a classroom environment) and earned a doctorate in education from the University of Southern California.
In the 26 years that Moran has worked in the field of education, he has engaged with students from kindergarten through graduate school, but he said he thinks he has the strongest connection with high school students.
“I really enjoy mentoring young people in that high school age because in just four years you transform from a big kid to an adult,” Moran said. “It’s a tremendous time of transformation and very pivotal in a person’s life.”
The president works closely alongside other administrators including principal Elias Mendoza. As principal, Mendoza runs academics and oversees students on a day-to-day basis. After working with previous St. Francis presidents, Mendoza said he believes the most important quality in a president is someone who has the ability to look at the big picture.
“St. Francis has been around for 85 years,” Mendoza said. “(The president) has to have a really long-term vision – what do we want St. Francis here in Sacramento to look like in the next 85 years? His job is really to put on those glasses and look into the distance. He has to be able to think far into the future of what learning is going to look like for a young woman in the next decade and beyond.”
Cynthia Cost, the St. Francis dean of students, is in charge of not only education but all safety. She leads Wellness and Safety Assemblies, plans out emergency evacuation routes and addresses complaints. She said she believes Moran will help greatly to improve and better the St. Francis campus and community.
“I think he does a very good job for being here such a short time,” Cost said. “He seems to be working extremely hard to really get to know not only our students, but our families and then our Sacramento community.”
Part of St.Francis’ strategic plan is to become the best all-girls school. According to YaleGlobal Online, 70 percent of U.S. high school valedictorians are women, and the American Psychological Association Meta-Analysis says that around 65 percent of girls outperform the average boy in terms of GPA. Moran said young women have proven time and time again that they can compete with men.
“My goal is to become the best school period,” Moran said. “Why should we say that we can only be the best amongst all girls schools?”
Moran would also like to expand academic extracurricular programs, particularly those concerning the arts and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). In July, Moran worked with Mendoza to launch the International Space Station Program, where high school students create an experiment to be tested on the International Space Station (ISSP).
“Typically, academic programs take at least a year to plan out – we need to make sure we have all the key players that we need, dedicated classroom space, furniture and resources,” Mendoza said. “But he thought that ISSP would be such a bold program that would combine with robotics and the rest of the STEM zone that he and I got creative and collaborated with Mr. (Marcus) Grindstaff from robotics to find a way of making this program happen in a short period of time.”
Moran understands the responsibility he has to the families of St. Francis – and more specifically, to all of the young women who are at a vital developmental stage in their lives.
“We’re in a sacred trust with parents to help raise their daughters,” Moran said. “We want to nurture the whole young woman – the mind, soul and spirit and focus on their social and emotional development so that they are happy and fulfilled young women that also have the skills to make an impact on the world.”
