Catholic schools' reprieve gratifies chief of study panel

The chairman of a commission that had recommended closing 45 Catholic elementary schools in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia lauded an appeals process that will allow nearly a third of those schools to remain open.

"I celebrate the results and pray they all survive in the long term," John J. "Jack" Quindlen, a retired DuPont official, said Saturday. "Neither the commission nor the archdiocese was in a rush to close schools. Our focus was on how to sustain them."

He said the recommendations the blue-ribbon commission made Jan. 6 calling for closing and merging schools as part of a broad restructuring of Catholic education in the region may have helped galvanize some of them. "I have to assume that at least some of the schools there took a look at their situation that we saw as marginal and said, 'If we can get our act together, we can do this.' "

Quindlen made his comments in a phone interview with The Inquirer a day after Bishop Michael Fitzgerald announced that Archbishop Charles J. Chaput had approved 18 of the 24 elementary school appeals of the commission's recommendations.

"Naturally, there will be a strong focus on the final decision resulting from the appeals," Fitzgerald, who oversees education in the archdiocese, said Friday. "But it is also important to realize that today is about taking the next steps in securing sustainability, accessibility, affordability, and continued excellence in the schools in the archdiocese."

The 16-member commission Quindlen led spent 13 months studying Catholic education in the region to develop a plan to halt declining enrollment and rising deficits to ensure the future of Catholic schools.

The commission said that at many of the financially troubled schools where tuition did not cover costs, parishes had to use church money to make up the deficits.

The archdiocese has 49,177 students in 156 elementary schools and 15,172 students at 17 high schools.

Since 2001, enrollment has plunged 38 percent at the elementary schools and 34 percent at the high schools.

In addition to calling for closing 45 elementary schools and creating regional schools, the commission recommended shuttering four Catholic high schools.

Fitzgerald said Friday a decision on the high schools had been delayed a week because the archdiocese was talking with a group of potential donors who had stepped forward to express interest in saving the targeted high schools.