By Kevin Mastellon
Staff writer

Watertown -  In 2001, Chris Hornbarger was working in the office of the Chief of Staff of the Army. A decade earlier he was leading a platoon of attack helicopters in South Korea. His career brought him to Fort Drum in Northern New York. He saw duty in Somalia and Haiti while flying for the 10th Mountain Division. Then his US Army career took a turn to a different kind of work. He became a strategist, developing plans and strategies for operations, for wars.

In Homeland Security 
Eleven days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US mainland, President George W. Bush announced that he would create an Office of Homeland Security in the White House. The office would oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard the country against terrorism, and respond to any future attacks.

Chris Hornbarger was moved from the Pentagon to the White House where he became Director for Policy and Plans in the Homeland Security Council. 
From his biography we learn he “was a principal member of the policy team that developed the National Strategy for Homeland Security and the President’s proposal for the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security.”

He left the Homeland Security Council in 2004 to teach at West Point but was also associated with the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy.

In 2007 Lieutenant Colonel Hornbarker was called to develop the strategy for training and empowering the Iraqi police, army and intelligence forces, freeing 100 thousand US troops to come home.  Then he was called to be Director of Plans and Strategy for the US Central Command-Iraq.

His job, since September 11, has been to stop terrorists.

A new focus
His focus changed this past summer. At 43, Lt. Col Chris Hornbarger retired from the US Army and moved back to Watertown with wife Elizabeth (Beth O’Brien) and children John Paul, Jacob and Sarah. 

For the past year, Chris Hornbarger has served as the Executive System Administrator of the Immaculate Heart Central Schools in Watertown which educates 536 students from Pre-K to 12th grade.   He works with the two principals of the school – Gail Graham in the elementary grades and Lisa Parson, grades seven through 12 “to advance the mission of the Immaculate Heart Central School System,” said  St. Joseph Sister Ellen Rose Coughlin, diocesan superintendent of schools.

“The duties of a principal have changed drastically in the last ten years,” Sister Ellen Rose explained, “both in the academic area but also in the area of school advancement, recruitment, marketing and enrollment management.”

The Education Council of the Catholic School system, selected Hornbarger to take on daily responsibility for finances, development, marketing, public relations, student recruitment  and strategic planning. In addition, Lisa Parsons, the Junior/Senior High School principal, was appointed  curriculum coordinator for the system to ensure a seamless curriculum and continuity of instruction throughout the system.

“The Education Council’s decision to hire a System Administrator recognizes the expanding role of principals as well as the system’s need for a full time person in the vital areas of development, marketing and strategic planning,” said Sister Ellen Rose.  

Similar stresses
Since his arrival at IHC, Hornbarger has discovered that his former position and new job, “surprisingly, share some similar stresses.

“We are under a lot of pressure of time to produce really significant results under difficult circumstances, he said. “And an entire community is watching with high expectation.”

“We are faced with the pressure of time,” he told the North Country Catholic. “We know that enrollment in Catholic schools has been declining, that’s nationwide, that’s North Country wide and that’s in this school system.  That’s reality.

“We know that birthrates are declining,” Hornbarger said. “We know that attitudes about Catholic religion and Catholic education are changing and parents’ expectations of what education is about are also changing.

“So in business terms, the market is changing,” he said. “So the core competencies that we have which we cannot lose sight of - a quality Catholic education, a rigorous academic education - is our touch stone.  But we also have to recognize a changing market and adapt.

“Short term we have to reach out to individuals and groups we have not contacted befor, Fort Drum for example and our alumni,” he said.

“We also need to look at the product we offer,” he said. “Some parents want us to offer more in a fine arts program for example.

“All new programs have to work congruently with existing and other new programs,” he said. 

“To ensure that new programs succeed we need to introduce them with stakeholder involvement, parent involvement, the attention of school administrators and we need the perspective of teachers and students, Hornbarger said.

“From them all you develop a plan, a vision and put in place strategies to get there,” he said.
These are the words of a planner, a strategist.

Developing a vision
Hornbarger knows the requirements of Immaculate Heart Central’s schools in the future have to match a vision for the system and require patience.

Mid-term he hopes to develop an annual fund and an aggressive grant seeking strategy tied to a school vision.  The end product will be to develop a vision of IHC five years from now and beyond.

“What do we want our school system to look like for our children and our grand children?” he asked.
He will not be creating the strategy in a vacuum. 

“This is my fourth institutional strategy,” he said. “Never before when I developed a strategy did I do it on my own. It is a process of guiding stakeholders so that their thumbprints are all over the strategy.  It is there strategy, our strategy.” That’s what Chris Hornbarger hopes to do for IHC.

“The core of our vision will not change, he says, “a strong Catholic education, a strong academic education, a safe and disciplined environment, values based.

“We have been here since 1888,” he said. “I have every confidence we will be here until 2088 and beyond.  We need to develop a vision that assures we will be healthy for that period of time.”