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Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) January 25, 1983 CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL TO
CLOSE Our Lady of Victory Hall, a private Catholic high school in Montgomery County, will be closed in June because of a growing number of operational problems. The planned closing was announced by the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, a Pennsylvania-based order that has run the school, at 7601 Old York Rd., Melrose Park, for 60 years. A shortage of teaching nuns, a growing deficit and a declining student enrollment influenced the decision to close the school, a spokeswoman for the order said. Our Lady of Victory Hall is a school for girls and the upper division of Melrose Academy. Sister Mary Elizabeth Looby, the principal, said the elementary school, kindergarten through eighth grade, would remain open. "The closing comes as a surprise to a lot of parents," Sister Looby said. ''There is shock and disappointment and a feeling of 'what do we do?' " Sister Looby said the high school has 83 students, including 25 seniors. In the late 1960s, the school had 140 students, she said. Sister Looby said the economy appeared to be a factor in the declining enrollment. Despite an annual tuition of $2,150 per child, the high school still did not have enough money to run the school, said the spokeswoman for the Grey Nuns. She would not disclose the amount of the school's deficit: "Just say it was quite large." Of the 15 teachers in the high school, only five are nuns. Hiring lay teachers, who make more money than nuns, was a financial burden, the spokeswoman said, adding that no one was joining the order to replace the nuns who are getting older. Nationally, Catholic schools are being staffed by more and more lay teachers. From 1968 to 1981, the number of American nuns decreased more than 30 percent, from 176,341 to 122,653. The Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, founded in 1921, has 274 nuns and provides teachers for schools in Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia and Alaska. Copyright (c) 1983 The Philadelphia Inquirer
December 16, 1992 A potent combination of nitty-gritty politics and savvy brokering by business leaders and alumni saved five Philadelphia Catholic high schools from closing or merging - at least for now. Catholic high schools outside Philadelphia were not so lucky. Two schools each in Montgomery and Bucks counties will merge and the city of Chester's only Catholic high school will close in June, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua announced yesterday. Students at the remaining 22 archdiocesan high schools can now attend any school under a new policy of open enrollment. That means hard work for the schools, which must now begin marketing their programs to lure students. Bevilacqua's announcement ends two months of nail-biting. "Now we go on living," he said yesterday. "I see this as a resurrection, as a new beginning for the Catholic schools." KEY ANNENBERG ROLE For the first time in a long time, city residents could say they haven't lost ground to the suburbs, as the decision to save inner-city schools and not the suburban ones bucked a decades-long trend. What worked for Philly? Large,
tradition-bound Catholic schools with huge numbers of alumni
in powerful business, government and private sector jobs, who
had a vested interest in making sure the schools continued to
produce Last-minute deals engineered by developer Ron Rubin; Mayor Rendell, a proven fund-raiser; City Councilman Daniel McElhatton, a Northeast Catholic High grad, along with dogged alumni, tipped the balance. The public process began last October, when Bevilacqua began plowing through 8,000 written pleas and sat through six regional meetings attended by more than 10,000 people who came out in response to a Coopers & Lybrand accounting firm's recommendation to close or merge 10 of the archdiocese's 25 high schools. The firm's $240,000 study cited declining enrollment and a $10 million deficit that could grow to $68.4 million by the year 2000. Yesterday, Bevilacqua said he would merge all-girls' Bishop Conwell with all-boys' Bishop Egan, and Archbishop Kennedy with Bishop Kenrick. He also said he would close St. James Catholic High School for Boys in Chester. Although the archdiocese had been talking with the business community for some time, things began to heat up about two weeks ago, when developer Rubin and other business leaders approached billionaire Walter Annenberg. "This is not a parochial issue," Rubin said. "It's a community and citywide and regional issue, and consequently we felt it was perfectly proper that the business community play a role." Out of that meeting came a promise from Annenberg, made public last week, to give $2 million to the archdiocesan schools if the schools and the archdiocese raised $8 million. The matching grant prompted more acts of largesse. Last Friday, Rendell appealed to corporate leaders to contribute to the schools. Rendell, Chamber of Commerce chief Charles Pizzi and Bevilacqua will be sending out a joint letter to more than 6,000 businesses next month urging them to help raise the $8 million for Annenberg's challenge grant. Rendell said businesses would have to come up with about $1.3 million annually; so far he and the chamber have received pledges totaling $250,000 annually. To raise the rest, the mayor said, he would be working the phones for a few days in January. PRINCIPALS SIGN PACT The fiscal consequences of absorbing the affected students into the city school system at a cost of millions was critical to Rendell's decision to step in, the mayor said, as was the fact that some of the targeted schools "are in the hardest hit of our city neighborhoods." Additionally, the mayor said, "Catholic schools and our better public schools produce a good product for our work force." Archdiocesan officials also looked to alumni to help with the operating deficit, now about $2 million a year. Many city alumni groups promised to raise funds for scholarships and school budgets and to recruit more students. Each school principal signed an agreement promising to absorb the school's operating deficits starting next year and to recruit more students. "Basically, the schools were saying to us, 'Give us the same opportunity that was given to Roman Catholic a number of years ago. Give us open enrollment. Let us do our own marketing and recruitment. Let us concentrate on certain strengths within our school,' " said Monsignor Philip Cribben, secretary of Catholic education. Roman Catholic High School in Center City, the first archdiocesan school to operate with open enrollment, staved off closure a few years ago. Rita Schwartz, president of the Association of Catholic Teachers, which represents the system's 900 lay high-school teachers, said open enrollment would inalterably change the schools. "We're not now a system of schools working together. We are a system of schools where we're in competition with one another." But for the surviving high schools - which the report had recommended for closing or mergers - the new policy seemed like a chance at salvation. SCHOOLS TO BE MONITORED And the promises they made to meet Bevilacqua's challenge aren't empty, either. The Archdiocese's Office of Catholic Education and the school board will monitor the five city schools each year to make sure they comply. Archdiocesan officials said they looked favorably at the promises of city Catholic schools because the schools' alumni groups had a history of strong support. "We were able to get alumni working," said West Catholic alum Horace Small. "We knew where to put pressure on, how to lobby. Because of our sheer numbers and sheer strength, we were able to produce what we claimed we could produce." The suburban schools, younger
than the city schools, had smaller alumni associations that were
not as active and couldn't make those kinds of "Money talks," said Paul Balzano, a Kennedy alum. "It appears that all of a sudden, the city plans are feasible and obviously the money is sufficient, but not for the ones in the suburbs." As far as Bob McLaughlin, president of the St. James alumni association, is concerned, last-minute efforts of the city's movers and shakers did little for his alma mater. "It's easy to cut St. James loose," he said. "We're kind of a poor cousin. When there was growth, the archdiocese extended into the suburbs. Now that it is withdrawing into its fortress, it feels obligated because of political pressures to protect the pockets of strength." For McLaughlin, the fight isn't over. He wants the archdiocese to turn the school over to the alumni, who want to open it as a co-ed Catholic high school Copyright (c) 1992 Philadelphia Daily News
May 28, 2007 For many, the reality that this will be the last graduating class at Cardinal Brennan High School still hasn't sunken in. From its origin as Immaculate Heart Academy, through unions with Shenandoah Catholic and St. Joseph high schools, the Fountain Springs school has a long tradition of faith and academic excellence. The school's baccalaureate Mass will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday in beautiful, spacious St. Casimir Roman Catholic Church, 229 N. Jardin St., Shenandoah. And it will feature the combined Shenandoah Community Choir, which should be a source of inspiration and hope for all who attend. Yes, it will be a sad time for many who have supported the school over the years. No doubt tears will not be in short supply. But through the heartbreak of the announcement several weeks ago that the Catholic high school will close at the end of the current year, the Brennan family must carry on with life, buoyed by memories of what went before, confident that their work was not in vain, but rather enabled great accomplishments. This baccalaureate service will be one to remember. Copyright (c) 2007, The Pottsville Republican & Evening Herald, Pottsville, PA. |