Catholic K-8's Shrink and Cause Is Debated

By David Winzelberg
New York Times
February 13, 2005

A fixture in New Hyde Park for 95 years, the Holy Spirit School will close its doors in June for the last time. Lagging enrollment will put an end to the Catholic school, which teaches kindergarten through eighth grade.

Its principal, Denise Seck, said Holy Spirit had 550 students when she started there as a teacher in 1991. By 2002 enrollment had slumped to 232, and this final semester it stands at 182. The 17 teachers who work at Holy Spirit are hoping to find new jobs for the next school year, most likely in the remaining 55 K-8 schools in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Ms. Seck said.

''It's very sad,'' she said. ''This is my second family. The faculty has been here a very long time. We're all going to miss it greatly.''

In 1992 the diocese closed 22 parish elementary schools and replaced them with 10 regional schools. Holy Spirit will be the ninth diocesan school forced to close or merge with another school since then. The last previous victim was St. Boniface in Elmont, which closed last year.

Catholic K-8 schools are in a slide, with enrollment down 19 percent from five years ago, according to Sister Joanne Callahan, superintendent of schools for the diocese, which includes Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The decline on Long Island is more than twice as steep as in the country as a whole, where Catholic elementary enrollment slipped by 8.5 percent over the same period.

Sister Callahan blamed rising taxes and higher tuition costs, about $3,900 a year, for the decline in younger students. But even though tuition for the Island's Catholic high schools, about $7,100 a year, has also risen steadily, enrollment in the 11 Catholic high schools on the Island has increased 12 percent in the last five years.

And many non-Catholic private schools, some of them with tuitions triple the rate of the diocesan schools, have had stable or increased enrollments in that same time. K-8 enrollment at the Portledge School in Locust Valley has gone up about 10 percent since 1999, according to a spokeswoman, Elaine Corso. Down the road at the Friends Academy, the director of admissions, Patty Ziplow, said elementary enrollment had been stable.

Carol Rogers, the admissions director at the East Woods School in Oyster Bay, said more of its young students have come from Catholic schools in recent years. She said the reasons parents gave for leaving Catholic schools were class size and strength of faculty. ''They never mentioned money as a deterrent,'' Ms. Rogers said.

Thomas Murphy of Sayville, who removed his two sons from catechism classes at St. Lawrence the Martyr, cited the diocesan sexual abuse scandal as one reason for the recent dearth of children in early grades. Eight Long Island priests have been dismissed from the priesthood for sexual abuse of minors, and church trials have been ordered for three more, according to a letter to parishioners from Bishop William Murphy last month.

But Thomas Murphy wasn't satisfied. ''Since the diocese reportedly refused to reveal the names of accused pedophile priests, isn't it reasonable to conclude that these men could be lurking in Long Island's Catholic schools?'' he asked. ''Why would responsible parents introduce their children to this environment?''

Sister Callahan said she didn't attribute the enrollment drop to worries about pedophile priests. ''That has never been said to me,'' she said. ''I have never heard one parent who left the schools say that was a reason. If there were any complaints about the priests, it was that they aren't in the classroom enough.''

Tom Myles, a director of the Long Island Voice of the Faithful, a grass-roots group that has criticized the diocese's handling of pedophile priest cases, said: ''It's a shame that the diocesan superintendent is not cognizant that there may be hundreds of silent victims who have not further enrolled in the schools.''

Sean Dolan, the spokesman for Bishop Murphy, said elementary enrollment has been in decline since the 1980's -- it peaked in 1983-84 at 34,397 -- so the slide can't be attributed to the sexual abuse scandal. ''In 2000 a new sexual harassment policy was added to the teachers' handbook that is directed toward adults and children,'' Mr. Dolan said. ''Any allegation of sexual abuse of a minor is thoroughly and quickly investigated and reported to law enforcement.''

The diocese recently brought together a group of educators, business people and clergy to help bolster enrollment in its elementary schools. Joseph Geoghan, a retired lawyer and a member of the group, said the two biggest reasons for the drop in enrollment are high tuition and misconceptions about the schools themselves. ''Some people might think that our schools are not as good,'' Mr. Geoghan said. ''We think they clearly are.''

Besides educating parents on what is good in Catholic elementary schools, the commission will create a foundation to help with tuition assistance for families in need. Money would be raised through grants and donations from companies and private individuals. Mr. Geoghan said that $2 million would be a ''reasonable target'' to raise for an endowment, and that would pay for a third of the tuition for about 1,500 of the 23,825 Catholic elementary school students. ''Parents currently bear 63 percent of the per-pupil cost in diocese elementary schools,'' Mr. Geoghan said. ''We want to bring that ratio down.''

Sister Callahan favors some kind of tuition tax credit for parents who want to send their children to Catholic school, but can't afford to. She said that the Catholic elementary schools have strong academic programs that also emphasize community service, and that 90 percent of the Catholic elementary school faculty members are certified teachers, but that they need better marketing to let people know.

Mary DeMarco Lee's son and daughter both went to Catholic elementary school (St. Martin's in Amityville) and later to Catholic high schools (St. John the Baptist in West Islip and St. Anthony's in South Huntington), and said Catholic schools works for students who ''thrive better within a structural environment.'' Ms. Lee, a lawyer from Amityville, attended the Holy Innocents elementary school in Brooklyn and said her family had stressed a Catholic education. ''I'm happy that there is more structure,'' she said. ''St. Martin's is a very good school, although I would like to see more diversity.''

Minority enrollment in the diocese is about 19 percent for elementary schools and 17 percent in the high schools, Sister Callahan said. But minority enrollment rates at individual schools range from 5 percent to 87 percent.

Ms. Seck, who taught seventh- and eighth-grade English at Holy Spirit for 10 years before becoming principal in 2001, blames the high cost of living for the declining enrollment.

''For most of our parents, they both have to work just to pay for their house,'' she said. ''There's not always enough left over for tuition.''

She suggested that some families may have decided to send their children to public elementary schools and put off the extra expense of a Catholic education until high school.