Catholic School Closings Need More Than A Miracle

THE DECLINE of the Philadelphia region's Catholic school system is old news. In Philly alone, the Archdiocese now plans to close 18 elementary schools and two high schools. But between 2000 and 2010, the city lost 23 Catholic grade schools and two Catholic high schools, and total enrollments in Philly Catholic schools fell from about 50,000 to around 30,000. The city's public charter schools have more students than its Catholic schools.

The decline would have been even steeper were it not for the influx of non-Catholic students - who are a quarter of the city's Catholic grade-school enrollment - and the tens of millions of dollars pumped into the Catholic school system by the Children's Scholarship Fund of Philadelphia, Business Leaders Organized for Catholic Schools and numerous family foundations and individual philanthropists. The question, then, is not whether some bold plan is needed. It is.

As someone who is the product of the region's Catholic schools, from Saint Laurence to Bonner to Saint Joe's University, and who has daughters enrolled in St. Thomas the Apostle, which is slated to become a host site for a regional school and Cardinal O'Hara, which will pick up students from West Catholic and Bonner/Prendergrast, I have a personal stake in the matter.

If Catholic education is to have a real and brighter future in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties - if scores more Catholic schools are not to close in this region, and if a day is yet to dawn when some once-closed schools may actually be reopened - then the commission's plan needs to be modified on the merits now.

* First, the Archdiocese has a moral, if not a legal or contractual, obligation to provide more than indirect support to the dedicated Catholic school teachers who will lose their jobs. Some substantial job-placement program is needed to help displaced teachers find other ways to earn their daily bread and have more than a prayer of making ends meet in this bad economy.