By Amy White
The Texas Catholic
It is not the accolades received, nor the projects completed, but the community encountered that Patrick Magee treasures most as he prepares to retire his post as president of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School, the longtime administrator said. After more than two decades of leadership at the Dallas school, including more than a dozen years serving as the institution’s first president, Magee is stepping down from the position at the end of the 2025-2026 school year, with Lisa Long set to take up the mantle.
Considering this approaching professional milestone, Magee took a moment to reminisce with gratitude on his decades of educational leadership, both at St. Thomas Aquinas and in the Diocese of Dallas more broadly.
“I’ve been in the Diocese of Dallas for 35 years,” the outgoing president said. “It’s just a wonderful place to work.”
Following an early stint in accounting and then teaching in his native Massachusetts, Magee has served in the Diocese of Dallas as a teacher at Holy Trinity Catholic School and Bishop Lynch High School, an assistant principal at Bishop Dunne Catholic School, a principal at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic School, and a principal and then president at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School, serving as an example of joyful and mission-driven leadership.
“The Diocese of Dallas,” he said, “has been such a great place for me to grow.”
Leading the way
The year Magee joined the St. Thomas Aquinas community as principal, 2005, was a pivotal one, not only for him but also for the school itself, the administrator recalled.
“That first year, we opened up the Lower School. So, there was a lot of sitting in meetings with hard hats and trying to figure out, ‘Well, wait a minute: How high are chalkboards for 5-year-olds?’” he recalled. “It was just a baptism by fire, so to speak.”
As he faced this onslaught of new responsibilities — with the many challenges and blessings that a largescale project can bring — Magee successfully led his new school community forward. Over the course of that first year, STA’s enrollment grew from approximately 640 students in 2005 to a predicted enrollment of 916 the next year, a 43% increase, according to Lauren Roberts, principal of STA’s Lower School.
“The school was just growing,” Magee recounted, “by leaps and bounds.”
As the community continued to expand, school leadership realized that St. Thomas Aquinas could benefit from a president-principal model — a novel approach among elementary schools in the diocese. As the school made the shift to that model, Magee took on the role of STA’s first president.
“Patrick was the champion of the president-principal leadership model,” Roberts said, “being the first among Catholic elementary schools in Dallas to implement it and among the first in the U.S. to adopt this model.”
A community of joy
Over the course of the years of Magee’s presidential tenure that followed, St. Thomas Aquinas underwent many significant changes: expanding programs to include learning accommodations, for example, as well as widening the selection of elective opportunities, purchasing property for athletic fields, and earning recognition as a National Blue Ribbon school, Magee shared.
“We have a really pretty big window of opportunity for you to be successful here,” he said, “from all the electives that we’ve implemented into the school, from rugby to robotics to our fine arts program.”
Some of Magee’s major contributions as president, Roberts noted, have even reached beyond the boundaries of his particular school to impact the Diocese of Dallas community more broadly. He was invaluable, for example, in supporting diocesan schools as they encountered the remarkable difficulties that the coronavirus pandemic posed, she shared.
“Patrick received well-earned accolades during the COVID pandemic, not only for the conscientious way he navigated our school through that significant challenge, but for the leadership role he assumed in bringing together all the principals in the diocese in an informal weekly online meeting forum,” Roberts recalled. “Patrick created a space where we could share our worries and challenges, collaborate to solve problems, and most importantly laugh and cry together and support one another.”
While Magee has many tangible accomplishments to his name, the principal said, the outgoing president’s impact is possibly most keenly felt in the culture of joy, community, and faith that he has fostered at the school.
“What Patrick is perhaps best recognized for is his ability to build a phenomenal school culture,” Roberts said, “making our school a place where teachers love to come every day to teach, where students love to come every day to learn, and where happy parents have peace of mind knowing their kids are safe, well taught, well formed in the faith, and loved.”
That sense of community — prioritizing happy teachers, happy students, and happy parents — is what Magee said he values most from his time in leadership at the school.
“We take care of not just every 4-year-old or 14-year-old, but we take care of every parent, anybody who joins our community,” he said. “You are just welcomed in and supported.”
Giving thanks
As Magee looks toward a future beyond the walls of STA, he said he hopes to continue contributing to the Catholic community of North Texas through other educational and leadership opportunities. He also expressed gratitude for St. Thomas Aquinas, the school that has been his professional home for decades.
“I am going to miss the people that I get to do this work with. I’m going to miss every single kid that I get to open the door for in the morning,” he said. “That day-to-day, day in and day out experience of leading a Catholic school — I’m going to miss that a lot.”
The community of St. Thomas Aquinas, in turn, gives thanks for Magee’s faithful leadership and for the fruits that it will bear for generations to come, Father Ryan Hiaeshutter shared.
“On behalf of our parish and school community, I offer heartfelt thanks for his years of leadership, marked not only by excellence but by a deep commitment to the mission of Catholic education,” the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Parish pastoral administrator said. “The St. Thomas Aquinas community will be forever grateful for Patrick’s commitment to fulfilling his vocation in promoting the light of Christ, knowing that the seeds he has planted here will continue to bear fruit in the years ahead.”
Cutline for featured image: Patrick Magee, whose career as a Catholic school educator in the Diocese of Dallas spans more than three decades, will retire as president of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year. Magee has spent more than a dozen years serving as St. Thomas Aquinas’ first president. (MICHAEL GRESHAM/The Texas Catholic)
