Ronnie Polaneczky: Thriving tech school a casualty of North's fall?

IT'S BEEN TWO weeks since the Philadelphia Archdiocese announced it would close Cardinal Dougherty and Northeast Catholic high schools in 2010.

Parents at both schools are reeling, but the ones at Northeast Catholic (North Catholic, for short) feel especially hoodwinked. They say the Archdiocese made a promise - referred to in two newspaper articles - that North would remain open at least through 2011.

The headline of the first piece, published in a community newspaper in November 2006, trumpeted: "A Technological Miracle Promises Five More Years For North Catholic."

The "miracle" was a $1.5 million program, based at North and funded by alumni, that would train students and community members in information technology, computer repair and network management. Supposedly, the program ensured North's survival through 2011.

Thirteen months later, the North Catholic IT Academy opened. An October 2007 Inquirer story about it noted, again, that North would stay open until 2011.

"We met with Bishop [Joseph] McFadden," John Fries, a 1961 North grad who helped get the academy off the ground, told the Inquirer. "I'm an old-time selling guy, and it was one of my better selling jobs. He promised us five years, through 2011."

Based on that promise, some parents tell me, they enrolled their kids as freshmen at North.

Now that North will close in 2010, those parents are frantic about where to educate their boys for senior year.

"My son was excited about the IT program," says Joanne Giulian. "Now he won't graduate from North or get IT training. Both of his dreams are gone."

I called Bishop McFadden, the Archdiocese education vicar, to ask about that five-year guarantee. He said he had never made a blanket promise, even though the papers reported otherwise. He didn't try to correct the misimpression, he told me, because he didn't want to "throw water on the effort to improve the position of the school."

He said his hopes for the school's future had been predicated on the success of the IT program.

"I supported the program as it was proposed, which included the opening of a night school for adults," he told me. "Their fees would've helped to fund the bottom line of running the school."

It was hoped that the academy would increase high-school enrollment; it hasn't.

Also, he added, its adult-education component "never really materialized," so no significant income has been generated.

That's news to the academy's director, Betty Palmieri.