More Catholic Schools Closing Across US

newsmax.com ^ | April 12, 2008 | staff

[kellynla]

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- For 46 years, crime, recessions and hurricanes proved no threat to the daily ritual of St. Monica School, where the entire blue-and-white uniformed student body gathered outside each morning to join in prayer.

Come June, though, the tradition will fade away, and "amen" will close St. Monica's morning recitations for the last time. The school, a home-away-from-home for mostly minority students, will close.

As Pope Benedict XVI next week makes his first trip to the U.S. as pontiff, Catholic schools across the country, long a force in educating the underprivileged regardless of their faith, face the same fate as St. Monica.

About 1,267 Catholic schools have closed since 2000 and enrollment nationwide has dropped by 382,125 students, or 14 percent, according to the National Catholic Education Association. The problem is most apparent in inner cities, in schools like St. Monica with large concentrations of minorities whose parents often struggle to pay tuition rather than send them to failing public schools.

"We lose the kids. They can't afford it. And then as the school gets smaller, you have to raise the tuition to pay the costs and it's a vicious cycle," said Sister Dale McDonald, the association's director of public policy and education research.

The pope will gather with Catholic educators during his visit, but not those who run elementary schools _ the meeting is with college presidents.

St. Monica has been operating on a deficit for about a decade. Enrollment went from 368 students in 2004 to 196 today. Requests for financial aid increased. The Archdiocese of Miami devoted more than $2.7 million in subsidies over the past seven years to keep it open.

"There's not the numbers there to keep going," said Kristen Hughes, superintendent of schools for the archdiocese. "The economy really has had a huge impact."

McDonald notes Catholic schools have been closing since their peak in the 1960s, when there were 12,893 schools with about 5.25 million students. Today, there are 7,378 schools with 2.27 million students. The decline in enrollment is accelerating, fueling further school closures.

The recent economic downturn is being blamed for some of them, but McDonald said dioceses' huge payouts to settle sex abuse lawsuits could have played a role too.

"We have no direct correlation," she said, "but as the dioceses have gone into financial debt the funds to subsidize these schools would be diminished."

High school enrollment has remained roughly the same and schools are opening in suburbs, particularly in the West and Southwest. The Northeast and Midwest have been hit hardest.

Some dioceses have turned to public-private partnerships to keep schools open, and others have created consortiums of schools to share resources. In the Archdiocese of Washington, officials plan to convert seven schools into publicly funded charter schools this fall.

Taking taxpayer money means sacrificing the core element of Catholic schools: their faith. The schools won't be able to have prayers, and will have to strip religion from the curriculum. That has prompted petitions from parents who want the schools to stay as they are.

"What is lost is the teachings of the Catholic faith," said Joe McKenzie, a 41-year-old technology consultant who has two children at St. Gabriel School in Washington. "That voice will be silent."

McDonald said she is concerned, too. Catholic schools were once considered vital to passing on the faith to the next generation and to exposing multitudes of non-Catholics to the church. With declining enrollment, the church will need to find new means.

Perhaps most distressing to McDonald and others is the loss of schools in the inner city.

"The church has always had a strong sense of mission, particularly to the poor," she said. "As it becomes more and more difficult, not only on the poor but on middle-income people, we're not really fulfilling the mission of the church to serve all if we only can afford to serve the people who can afford the big bucks."

The issue has caught the attention of President Bush, who called faith-based schools "lifelines of learning" in his State of the Union address and said they were disappearing at an alarming rate. The White House will host a summit on the topic later this month.

Advocates for Catholic schools say it's in the public's interest to preserve them. McDonald said Catholic school students save the government $19.8 billion annually.

"They've left these urban inner-city schools when they close and they have to go somewhere," said Virginia Gentles, who oversees the nonpublic education office of the U.S. Department of Education. "It could be tough for the districts financially and from other standpoints to absorb those children."

For now, parents still line up in cars outside St. Monica each afternoon to pick their children up. Many say how sad they are to see it close.

[RipSawyer]

But you keep up the anti-Catholic smears and see how you fair when the time comes to meet your Maker. LOL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Fair should have been fare.

[MediaMole]

Another big problem was switching from staffs consisting of teaching nuns, volunteers, or laypeople willing to work for less - to certified teachers with competitive salaries and benefits.

One problem is that the salaries and benefits are not competitive with public schools. Around here, an experienced public school teacher makes more than $55k. The teachers in some of the less successful Catholic schools were making less than half and the quality of the faculty suffered.

[alfa6]

Might I ask where you taught by the Brothers of De LaSalle?

St. Louis for me.

Regards

alfa6 :>}

[kellynla]

Christian Brothers College in Memphis

[kellynla]

I stand corrected.

[alfa6]

I looked at going to college there once upon a wee time.

Thanks a lot and have a great day.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[keepitreal]

The only nun in the school my daughter used to attend was the PE teacher!

[nutmeg]

Sad. I only attended a Catholic school for 3 years (6th through 8th grade), but - although it was tough - it was the best education experience I've ever had. Returning to a public high school (in the 1970s) was a major culture shock... stuff went on there that the nuns would never tolerate...

[LomanBill]

It’s unfortunate that Emperor Constantine’s institution of hierarchical syncretists has traditionally chosen to deal with sexually dysfunctional individuals by recruiting them into the clergy.

Hopefully your daughter’s PE teacher was not one of the afflicted.

[Wonder Warthog]

"The teachers in some of the less successful Catholic schools were making less than half and the quality of the faculty suffered."

A BIG part of the problem is the insistence on "certified" teachers (aka graduates of "colleges of education". My wife and I are both Catholics (her cradle, me convert last year) and PhD chemists, and are due to retire soon. We would LOVE to teach at a Catholic school, probably just for benefits (health insurance). We could certainly handle chemistry and general science, and with a little mentoring, physics and math. But neither of us is "certified" (of course, if we taught at university, we WOULD be qualfied to "teach the teachers").

I'm sure we're not the only ones out there.

[OeOeO]

Please help me here, I am trying to find the article about the 70 year old nun suspended for threatening to bust a kid in the mouth.
The parents,I think were suing.(In my time all three would have busted me in the mouth.) Can't find it in search. Thanks

[keepitreal]

Unfortunately, I believe she was. Her “habit” consisted of a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and cargo shorts.

[Wonder Warthog]

"It’s unfortunate that Emperor Constantine’s institution of hierarchical syncretists has traditionally chosen to deal with sexually dysfunctional individuals by recruiting them into the clergy."

The only thing the Catholic church is guilty of is believing the current crop of psychologists when they said that people of homosexual orientation were not mentally ill, and, as a result, considering them capable of living up to their vows of chastity and celibacy.

As a result of the above the Church STOPPED the close scrutiny to screen homosexuals out of seminaries. You can rest assured that that policy is no longer in place, and strict scrutiny is being re-instituted.

I suggest you take your Catholic-bashing elsewhere.

[LomanBill]

>>You can rest assured that that policy is
>>no longer in place, and strict scrutiny
>>is being re-instituted.

 

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

I remember quite vividly how the clergy of the local RC institution openly participated in anti-war demonstrations back in '68.

 

I also remember a young associate of mine who was having a difficult time going through puberty and was uncertain about his sexuality.  His priest was attempting to convince him that it was "ok if he didn't like girls" and that he should consider the priesthood.   That was in Nebraska.  I've often wondered if that young man didn't end up in Boys Town.

 

The historical facts are what they are.  If that's "Bashing" then tough.  You're a coward for hiding behind such words.

[ElPatriota]

Just do a search on amazon.com and you will get plenty of sources. These books are VERY cheap ($2 - $10) especially if used so read and learn.

Some think I hate the church, not true... But I hate those who ALLOWED the CC to slide off to such a low levels. Those WHO KNEW but looked the other way DID more harm to the church that I ever could. More sadly even and still puzzling to me today is the fact that after the full extend of the abuses were finally known by the press, was the meek response of the church to the whole thing. I would have thought the CC would have come "swinging" to clean up and punish the CRIMINALS. Instead, even today, the message is mixed and definitely no clear on what the position of the church is in all this. I can’t help to wonder if the homosexual / pedophile - liberal nuns of the sixties, already filtered into the higher ranks of the church and thus the muted response. I wonder...

Oh yes, to the original point, I think this little and recent episode in the CC might have something to do with its “lack of popularity? Credibility?” well, something like that.

[livius]

You can often find emergency credentialling programs (I don’t know what state you live in) and, in addition, Catholic schools, like most private schools, often have different requirements. Check into it! I’m sure there’s something you could do.

Also, I read a truly brilliant idea that somebody here posted a couple of days ago: the Catholic Church should simply guarantee a free, solid Catholic education to every child in the country. Where would the money come from? Well, as soon as it got out that kids were getting a good education, good moral values and even, yes, mandatory instruction in the Catholic faith (which they don’t have to believe, but which they do have to sit through), the money would come rolling in. And it would be from private sources, not from the government. Furthermore, it would probably single-handedly result in the revival of religious teaching orders, male and female, and perhaps the development of new forms to accomodate older or married people. And this would also keep the price down, since one of the difficulties now is that Catholic schools have to pay competitive salaries, which was not the case in earlier days.

One of the problems with religious orders is not only did they abandon their habits and community life, but they abandoned their work, somehow deciding that teaching was beneath them. The fact that many young women (and men) had gone into these orders because they wanted to teach, rather than be social workers, “pastoral assistants,” or whatever, is one of the reasons a lot of them left when the orders quit teaching.

[livius]

Curiously, the sexual abuse in public schools goes virtually unnoticed by the press or by writers, partly because there’s no money in it.

A study in New York City found that something like 1/3 of the substitute teachers and about 20% of the permanent teachers had been charged with and in fact usually convicted of sexual crimes against children. Because of union pressure, many of these teachers were kept on the job while charges were pending (and it was the child victims who were sent elsewhere!) or, if it was really too hot to handle or more than the first offense, they were sent to warm a desk at 110 Livingstone Street, Bd of Ed headquarters, where they received their full salary. Even if they were dismissed, it was often with all or part of their salary for a number of years.

Furthermore, the city never bothered to examine the background of applicants, many of whom had recent records for sexual abuse of minors.

New York was certainly not the only city, and I have read that the national statistics for sexual abuse in public schools or charter schools run by small political or religious groups are higher than those for Catholic schools. But again, lawyers and writers go where the deep pockets are.

Essentially, the Catholic bishops behaved no differently from the public school administrators, who relied on “counseling” at full pay, intimidation of the victims, etc. to deal with the problem. That is a terrible failing, and it is probably also true that there are a couple of lavender bishops out there who have protected gay priests and are still doing so. It’s not excusable, but you have to wonder why the press is not paying a little more attention to the (male and female) child molesters who seem to plague the public school system, particularly since far more children are in public school and hence at risk. If they were really concerned about the kids, they would look at the public schools.

[Petronski]

Silently accept all manner of lies, misrepresentations, distortions and generally old-fashioned Catholic-bashing or admit you're a coward...papist!

[KYGrandma]

What city are you in? We are getting a new elementary school, but it is two parish schools merging. My kids are upset as they are changing the name. Unfortunately, they are building an Islamic “information” building right next to the church and the old school.

[ElPatriota]

...Essentially, the Catholic bishops behaved no differently from the public school administrators...

But, But... Are you COMPARING the two?... Are you comparing, therefore expecting equivalent results from pratically an immoral PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM and its 'administrators' with the *** HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH ****?... Inverntors and sole administrators of "morality" and "sainthood" for millions of souls in the entire universe? :)...

That is like talking about a "pinto" (car) and a Rolls Royce in the same breath. Kidding but I hope you see my point :)