The Good News and Bad News of Catholic Schools Week

Rich Leonardi of Ten Reasons writes on "The Good News and Bad News of Catholic Schools Week" at Catholic Exchange:

The theme for this year's Catholic Schools Week (wrapping up today) is "Catholic Schools: the Good News in Education." There is plenty of good news. Catholic schools are doing their best to educate children from all walks of life, and tuition-assistance programs around the country like Cincinnati's Catholic Inner-City Education Fund (CISE) underscore the Church's commitment to the poor. Moreover, one senses that much of the "felt-banner" silliness that infected religious education in recent decades is behind us.

Yet, unfortunately, there is a fair amount of "bad news" this year. School closings, having sadly become routine events in recent years, seem to be accelerating, and many schools seemingly "in the black," are experiencing long-term enrollment declines. In New York City, nineteen Catholic schools are slated for closure. Here in Cincinnati, six are on the bubble; one, Ss. Peter & Paul, is auctioning a Corvette donated by a generous parishioner to help raise the $600,000 required to keep its doors open. Unfortunately, they won't get much in the way of help from the diocese, which recently revealed it is less then three years away from bankruptcy.

There are many reasons for the troubled state of our Catholic schools: the continued demographic shift by Catholics to suburbs with well-established and government-funded public school systems; the expenses associated with the rise of lay teachers and administrators who require more in the way of income than the priests and nuns who preceded them; and the plummeting size of the average Catholic family which drives down enrollment. To top it all off, rising tuition rates have made schools founded to serve the poor, by the likes of Katharine Drexel and Mother Seton, a luxury affordable mostly by the wealthy and the middle class.

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