[7 x 77]

I bet at one time there were over 50.

[dennisw]

Steel made that school and as United States steel was unmade so was the Catholic school system.

[doug from upland]

This is funny. I looked at the article and thought it said "Gary's last Catholic school sluts." My first thought was that it was about Gary Condit. I went to the website to see why in the world they would put the word "sluts" in it. Of course, Catholic girls sometimes tend to be sluts because they can go to confession and can be forgiven. I guess for me it must have just been some Freudian thing.

[Hacksaw]

I find this amazing. My home town of Wheeling WV (hardly a bustling metropolis) has at least 5 Catholic grade schools. Maybe the poverty level has to do with it. Every time I drove through Gary on the way to Chi, I thought "what a hell hole".

[sinkspur]

It is a nationwide trend, not having enough students," said Gary Bishop Dale Melczek.

Not here, bishop. A second Catholic grade school is being considered for the DFW mid-cities, the first one (Holy Trinity) having opened just six years ago and it's already turning away students in large numbers.

There's also a Catholic High School being talked about, but that's further down the road.

[ladylib]

Charter schools are also taking students from the Catholic schools. The non-Catholics who sent their kids to Catholic schools did so because they wanted their kids to have a decent education, not because they wanted them instructed in the Catholic religion. Many inner-city Catholic schools have a large non-Catholic population.

Charter schools are "free." Catholic schools usually aren't.