What does it tell you when private Notre Dame
Academy in Villanova has 101 students in its freshman class – at $20,000
per year – and Archbishop Prendergast in Drexel Hill, an Archdiocesan
high school, has … 82? Yes –eighty two.
That the economy is
booming because folks can shell out 20K a pop? That the gap between rich
and poor is widening, with more people in the “have” category? Not
quite.
It tells us, in no uncertain terms, two things:
1. Over the last several decades, too many leaders in the Catholic Church
have strayed from their Godly mission, trying to be all things to all
people, destroying the Catholic identity, and, worst of all, covering-up
the child sex scandal and protecting pedophile priests (See Jan. 11 column).
The result has been, and continues to be, apathy for most, anger for
many, and an exodus from the church for thousands of others. The church
has reaped what it has sown, and nowhere is that more evident that the
30 percent decrease in Catholic school enrollment in Archdiocesan
schools.
2. The Catholic Church, for all its money, muscle and
might, has been a political paper tiger in fighting for its beliefs,
most notably school choice. For the last 15 years, it either didn’t do
its job to ensure passage of legislation that would provide a voucher to
parents (their own tax money) to send their children to the school of
their choice, or it backed meaningless and ineffective bills. Either
way, if the church had done its job effectively without cowering at the
sight of its own shadow, only a handful of the 49 schools that closed
recently and the scores – that everyone seems to be forgetting – that
have been shuttered over the last decade, would be out of business. In
fact, most would be thriving.
The Prendie situation tells it all.
While officially having “open enrollment” where physical or church
boundaries are not criteria for admission, Prendie still traditionally
draws from Catholic “feeder schools,” as does its brother school,
Monsignor Bonner (119 in its freshman class). Do the math. If we
conservatively estimate that there are 22 elementary schools serving
those high schools, that’s fewer than four girls per school going to
Prendie, and just six attending Bonner. No wonder they’re to be closed!
(Though
a strong case can be made to consolidate the two schools, many believe
the Archdiocese will not do so because a nearby hospital may be eyeing
the land. With potentially millions more in abuse settlements, the
church may need the proceeds of that sale to pay those large amounts –
just as the Boston Archdiocese sold 99 acres of prime real estate to
Boston College to pay settlements. Closing schools to pay sex scandal
settlements just infuriates Catholics that much more, leading to a
vicious circle of yanking students from Catholic schools altogether).
And
why are the elementary schools not sending more students? Two reasons.
Many parents are choosing public schools because they don’t feel the
value of Catholic high school is justified by a $6,000 price tag. And of
course, there aren’t many students left in Catholic elementary schools
in the first place. Take Annunciation BVM in Irish Catholic Havertown.
It is slated to close, allegedly because there aren’t enough students in
attendance (though they hit the attendance number the diocese mandated
and are one of a handful of schools with a parish surplus). But a drive
through the town will instinctively tell you what any demographic
statistician already knows: the Catholic population is more than healthy
enough to see Annunciation at 80 percent capacity – or even more.
The
proof? In 1911, there were 68,000 students in Archdiocesan schools, out
of 525,000 Catholics (in a diocese, by the way, that was considerably
larger in size than the one today). A century later, we are back at the
same level of 68,000 (down from a peak of 250,000 in the 1960’s), yet
the smaller-sized Archdiocese now has almost 1.5 million Catholics.
Those numbers clearly show that, for most areas (inner city Philadelphia
being an exception), the Catholic population is absolutely large enough
to support most of the schools that closed.
Taking out of the equation those
parents who are angry or disenfranchised with the church (and its
schools), there still remains a substantial number of families that
would love nothing better than to enroll their children, but simply
cannot afford to do so.
Unfortunately, those people get walloped
with a triple wammy. They slog through life paying some of the highest
tax rates in the entire world, funding wholly ineffective governments at
all levels while getting relatively little value in return. They live
in one of the few countries in the Western world that does not assist
parents with nonpublic school education. And they are scared to death
about receiving a pink slip in an economy that is tanking further by the
day, with many banking what they earn rather than paying for the
desired education for their children.
Enter school choice in Pennsylvania. Or lack thereof.
In
1995, a statewide, comprehensive school choice bill failed by a single
vote. And while the church played an active role in that fight, it
refused to do the things necessary that would have pushed the
legislation across the finish line. Priests should have been preaching
from the pulpit, educating parishioners on the merits of school choice
and rallying the troops to contact their legislators (which can clearly
be done without jeopardizing their nonprofit status). But overall, they
didn’t.
They could have placed pro-school choice cards addressed
to representatives and senators in each pew, to be filled out during
Mass and collected before exiting church. But they didn’t.
And
they could have tied all of it together by playing hardball with
wishy-washy politicians, informing them in no uncertain terms that
school choice would be the one and only issue that many Catholics would
be voting on – and Catholics vote – in the next election. But they
didn’t.
Instead, too many left the battle to the “insiders,” and
guess what? Choice failed, and schools closed. A lot of them, most of
which would be open today had school choice passed.
Fast forward
to 2011. What did the church do? Support the weakest, most meaningless
education reform bill that would have neither helped educate nor reform
anything (Senate Bill 1). It was so restrictive that it would not have
affected one middle class family, but the final version (which bombed)
seemed to cater only to those Capricorns in the inner city who promised
to wear plaid pants on Tuesdays.
The Catholic Conference’s
rationale for supporting such a bad bill? Incrementalism was the only
way to go, and, after all, that was the only bill out there. Talk about a
losing mentality. Maybe if the Catholic leaders in their ivory towers
had the foresight to see what was coming down the pike with school
closings, they would have made a broad-based bill a reality and went
full-bore to accomplish passage. And since the 1995 bill was run with a
somewhat hostile legislature and still almost passed, it should have
been a no-brainer to aggressively push for a bill this time that would
also help the middle class, since the Governor and legislature were
infinitely more amenable to such a bill.
But they didn’t.
And they didn’t even push for an
expansion of the educational improvement tax credit (EITC) after school
choice failed, which, while not a panacea, would certainly help.
Senate
Bill 1, even had it passed, would not have saved one Catholic school.
But that was simply an alien concept to the Church’s political
braintrust, and the results speak for themselves.
As a result,
all people suffer the financial consequences. Of the over 24,000
students displaced, a significant number will now attend public school.
And since it costs over $15,000 per student, per year to educate a
public school student, property taxes are about to go through the roof,
which could not come at a worse time. Not only will more textbooks and
buses have to be purchased, but more teachers, more modular classrooms,
and, quite soon, more capital projects to accommodate the influx of
Catholic school students.
Some claim that school choice is a
bailout of the Catholic schools. Wrong. Since the money is directed to
the parent, not the school, it clearly isn’t. But it will be interesting
to see the reaction from critics of school choice (and Catholicism in
general) when they can no longer afford to pay their property taxes. As
the saying goes, what goes around comes around.
Where do we go from here?
There is a passage from a book written in the 1987 book, God’s Children, that best sums up why Catholic education must be saved:
“The
Catholic Church must forget its inferiority complex. No other religion
is reluctant to ask for what it wants. If we don’t ask, if we don’t
stand up and fight for what we believe in, we can’t expect to win. Life
is a street fight. We can roll up our sleeves and jump in, not certain
whether we’ll win or lose, or walk away, allowing a huge part of our
heritage to disappear ….
If we fail, what do we tell the ghosts?
The nuns and priests who for two centuries devoted their lives to the
cause? The men and women, like our parents, who broke their backs to
support their families yet somehow found a way to support our schools?
Do we tell them that it’s over, that their legacy has disappeared
forever? That we couldn’t hold on to what they gave us?”
And most haunting:
“I don’t want to tell my children and grandchildren that I was around when time ran out on Catholic education.”
Is it that time? Put it this way.
Anyone who believes that the closings are done is simply deluding
himself, for shutting down schools is a band-aid solution to a gaping
wound that will continue to hemorrage.
That is, unless the
Archdiocese of Philadelphia somehow finds a leader with the courage of
his convictions, someone willing to “roll up his sleeves” and fight for
what is right.
Archbishop Chaput, your 15 minutes are upon you, and the floor is yours. Godspeed!