Philadelphia school closings will affect Catholic colleges, too

Before becoming president of Immaculata University, Sister R. Patricia Fadden spent 22 years of her career in Archdiocese of Philadelphia high schools.

From 1968 to 1977, she taught at West Catholic High School for Girls. She still fondly remembers students pouring onto Chestnut Street for a celebratory march when the basketball team won the local championship. From 1977 to 1985, she was director of studies at Cardinal Dougherty High School. And from 1985 to 1990, she was principal of Archbishop Prendergast High School.

Soon, none of those schools will be open. West Catholic, which merged with the boys' school in 1989, is one of four high schools slated for closure under the archdiocese's plan released this month. So is Bonner/Archbishop Prendergast in Drexel Hill. Cardinal Dougherty was shut in 2010.

Fadden doesn't just feel the loss, like so many students and alumni across the Philadelphia region. As a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission that recommended the closures, she was part of the decision.

And she stands by it.

"This is a necessary jump-start," Fadden said last week in her office on the scenic Chester County college campus. "It doesn't make me mind less the fact that two, actually or three, very important pieces of my professional past were a part of the necessary jump-start.

"Even if I cried over it, I would still vote for it."

And she did cry.

The plan will create a crop of regional schools with better curriculum and offerings and firmer financial footing that will enable the school system to thrive, she said.

She acknowledged that the decision would put pressure on Immaculata as well as some other Catholic colleges in the region that draw some of their students from the schools slated for closure. Several of the colleges, including Immaculata and Chestnut Hill, have gone coed in the last decade, successfully boosting declining enrollments. Both had been women's colleges.

In Immaculata's current freshman class of 281 students, eight came from Bonner-Prendergast and two from West Catholic, she said. Overall, 57 students came from the 17 archdiocesan high schools.

"Ten people is not to be sneezed at," Fadden said. "It is certainly an impact and we would certainly make every effort to know where those students went so we can increase our recruitment efforts in those target areas."