Catholic Bishops are looking to "transform" Catholic schools in response to decades of declining enrollment that has forced hundreds of schools to close since 2005.
Sponsored by the University of Notre Dame, a meeting was called, the sixth in a series since 2009, looking at the future of Catholic education.
Attendees heard sobering statistics on school closings and declining enrollment.
Figures from the National Catholic Educational Association show 1,393 Catholic school closings or consolidations from 2007 to 2017 compared with 287 school openings. During the same period, enrollment declined by 19 percent to less than 1.9 million students. Enrollment peaked in 1965 at more than 5.2 million students.
The Bishops and the educators chose to focus their attention on what they identified as four trends affecting declining parochial school enrollments:
1) The changing relationship across Catholic school leadership including those between Bishops and Pastors, Pastors and principals, and principals and teachers.
2) The evolving landscape of Catholic school governance as more advisory boards of lay leaders take shape.
3) Expanding access to Catholic schools through educational choice.
4) Charter school expansion.
While true, these trends are really only half-truths.
Here is the real reason for the demise of Catholic elementary schools that the Bishops and Pastors lack the courage to admit: CATHOLIC SCHOOLS ARE AND NEVER HAVE BEEN AFFORDABLE.
They are unaffordable both to parents and to parishes.
And the reason they are unaffordable: WOMEN RELIGIOUS ARE NO LONGER IN THE CLASSROOMS!
Catholic parochial schools have never been affordable and only appeared to be because Women Religious served as teachers, principals and administrators for “slave-like” wages.
This allowed many Pastors in the past to boast that their parochial schools were “tuition free” and were able to operate on the free will contributions to the parish.
Those free will contributions were more than sufficient to cover the cost of faculties staffed by Women Religious who provided teaching and administrative services for a price that had little impact upon overall parochial costs.
When the Sisters left the classrooms -- as they did in droves in the late 1960s and 70s -- they were replaced by lay teachers and administrators who in justice demanded a living wage which for decades had been denied Women Religious.
At that point, the reality of the un-affordability of Catholic parochial education was exposed for the deception it always was.
That fundamental fact and the related fact that many parents today do not see any particular value in the religious formation which occurs in the Catholic school are sufficient to explain why Catholic parochial education is at death’s doorstep.
Society has become very secular. Fewer and fewer parents see the value of religious education and increasingly lack the financial ability to pay the tuitions which Catholic parochial schools are demanding.
Until the Bishops, Pastors and the National Catholic Association of Educators come to terms with these truths, parochial schools will continue their onward march toward extinction.
There are a number of Bishops who wish to address the staggering tuition of parochial schools by insisting that civil legislation be passed within their States to provide financial assistance to parents who choose private of faith-based schools.
Such a solution is folly for it invites government intrusion into parochial education, a thought too terrible to seriously consider.
Other Bishops and Pastors insist upon going to donors, people whose lives have been positively affected by Catholic schools and have been blessed with economic security and asking them to give back to Catholic schools.
A stopgap strategy at best -- as are any and all forms of fundraisers to support schools.
A new model of religious education and formation needs to be developed.
Cooperation between parishes and charter schools might be a promising alliance since, while publicly funded, charter schools are privately run and afford parents with an alternative to traditional public education.
Yet, almost every Bishop and Pastor has been publicly reluctant and openly opposed to such an alliance.
Such reluctance and opposition will, in my opinion, spell the end of Catholic parochial education.
For some strange and sad reason, Bishops and Pastors don’t seem to care enough about parochial schools to be truly be creative and bold in providing for their continued service in the education and religious formation of children.
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