Catholic Schools

Sister Mary Isidore Gilewitch, 99, a nun who was as capable with a needle as with a hammer and who taught at many local schools, died Thursday, Jan. 31, in Fox Chase of cardiovascular problems. She entered the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great in 1930, teaching in Catholic schools in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland, and in Philadelphia, Easton, Chester, Fox Chase, and many other Pennsylvania municipalities. Her posts included St. Nicholas School in Philadelphia and Holy Ghost in Chester, according to the Fletcher-Nasevich Funeral Home.

OPPONENTS OF the school district's plan to close 37 schools have come up with another argument against the proposal. At a news conference this week, the group - which includes the local NAACP - accused the district of unfairly targeting predominantly black schools in poor neighborhoods. According to an analysis done by the Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools, 81 percent of the roughly 15,000 students who would be affected by this year's proposed closings and mergers are African-American.

Daniel J. Haley Jr., 92, the second-generation president of the family-owned Finnaren & Haley Paint Inc. for many years, died Sunday, Jan. 20, of cardiopulmonary arrest at the Waverly Heights retirement community in Gladwyne. Mr. Haley served as president and chairman of the board of Finnaren & Haley starting in 1958, when his father, company founder Daniel J. Sr., died. With brother Robert, the pair led the company's expansion to a peak of 35 retail stores in Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and Delaware, Mr. Haley's daughter Reggie Pakradooni said.

Gov. Corbett joined Catholic school supporters, students, educators, and pastors on Friday at a school in Northeast Philadelphia to mark a milestone in an effort to preserve Catholic elementary schools for area low-income children. Officials from the nonprofit Independence Mission Schools announced the appointment of two key staff members for the new 16-school system of independent "mission schools. " They also thanked Corbett for expanding corporate tax breaks for scholarship programs that will help low-income families pay tuition to send their children to the schools.

A Big East observer of a couple of decades looked at the dollar figures being floated for a television deal involving the seven Catholic schools putting together a new basketball league. "If those figures are even 80 percent true," he said, "that's great news for those schools. " Those schools are Villanova, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, and St. John's. If the numbers floated in an ESPN.com story are in the ballpark, this new league is hitting the open market at exactly the right time.

The seven Catholic schools that have decided to leave the Big East and form their own league continued to plot the future, retaining Proskauer Rose L.L.P. and Pilson Communications Inc., to aid in their defection. St. John's, Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul, Seton Hall, Providence and Villanova all decided last month to set off on their own as the Big East continues to reshape itself. GOLF: Rory McIlroy said he may skip the 2016 Olympics because of the dilemma over which country to represent.

Janet Dollard was a few months into her first year as president of Conwell-Egan High School in Fairless Hills when the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced in January it planned to close the school as part of a broad restructuring of Catholic education. Ultimately, Conwell-Egan and three other endangered high schools were saved, a foundation was established to manage them, and Dollard's school now has one of its largest freshman classes in years. "It was a whirlwind, really," Dollard recalled in a recent interview.

IHAVE BEEN thinking about this Big East Lite League for a week and I still don't know what to think about a conference with the Catholic Seven and teams X, Y and Z. If X is Xavier, Y is Butler and Z is one of Saint Louis, Dayton or Richmond, that has a chance to be a pretty good basketball league. But it will be the Big East in its heyday? Not even close. The reality is that day is done. Anybody who thinks we are going back is dreaming. What the seven schools wanted, more than anything, is to have some control over their athletic futures.

JIM BOEHEIM became the third Division I men's coach to reach 900 wins as No. 3 Syracuse beat visiting Detroit, 72-68, on Monday night in the Gotham Classic. Boeheim, 68 and in his 37th year at his alma mater, is 900-304 and joined an elite fraternity. Mike Krzyzewski (936) and Bob Knight (902) are the only other men's Division I coaches to win that many games. Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, Boeheim's college roommate, teammate and fellow Hall of Famer, and Roosevelt Bouie, a star on Boeheim's first team in 1976-77, were in the Carrier Dome crowd of 17,902.