Enrollment at Catholic elementary schools in the six-county diocese has declined 27 percent, from 14,954 in 2001 to 10,883 for 2007-08.
Galante noted that many of the diocese's 47 K-8 elementary schools ended the last academic year with deficits. More than half the schools - 30 - had fewer students than the 225 needed to maintain an elementary school with one class per grade.
The announcement of the reconfiguration of nine parish clusters with 35 Catholic elementary schools comes at the end of a detailed planning process. In January Galante announced his "Faith in the Future" initiative, aimed at strengthening Catholic education in the diocese.
Though other dioceses, including the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, have been closing some Catholic schools every year in the face of declining enrollment, Galante decided to review all the schools at once.
"In looking at our elementary schools, my great concern was that we strengthen the schools and give them stability. What I wanted to avoid was closing schools by attrition," Galante said in an interview yesterday.
"Rather than look at schools one at a time, we tried to look at them in clusters so that children in a particular area would have an opportunity for Catholic education."
Steering committees were established in geographic clusters to review demographic data, school financial reports, enrollment trends, facilities reports, and other information before making recommendations.
This month, the remaining nine clusters made their final recommendations, and Galante adopted most of them.
"The task was not an easy one, for planners were asked not to plan in isolation, but together with other schools," the bishop said. "They were asked not to save individual schools at all costs, but to do what is best for the common good and for the good of Catholic schools in each area of the diocese."
The plan announced yesterday calls for the following changes next fall. The merged schools will get new names:
