Independent Catholic schools offer option
On right, Karen Vonbevern wants St. John Baptist De LaSalle Regional School in Farmingdale to remain open, as she and others protest the closing of Catholic schools at the rally held outside St. Agnus Cathedral in Rockville Centre. (Jan. 21, 2012) Credit: Newsday/Karen Wiles Stabile
One school educates middle school boys from poor families in the Freeport area who pay just $750 a year in tuition. The school relies on generous donors to keep afloat and has a $1.3 million endowment.
Another school was on the verge of being closed by the Diocese of Rockville Centre when the religious brothers who run Chaminade High School took it over in 2004. Today it is thriving.
The schools are among four private, independent Catholic schools on Long Island that parents of children attending six diocesan schools slated to close in June are looking to as a possible model to keep their schools open.
The independent schools are Catholic, but operate outside the direct control of the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
"I think it's the only option right now," said Joseph Malerba, a spokesman for parents at St. Ignatius Loyola School in Hicksville, one of the six scheduled to close. "We've put so much into these schools that we just don't want to see them go away. We believe if we don't do something . . . it's only going to further deteriorate Catholic schools on Long Island."
The Diocese of Rockville Centre has said it is not backing off on its decision to close the six schools, announced on Dec. 6. It also says it has no plans to allow the schools to operate as independent private schools.
Some parents at the six schools are turning to the Marianist Brothers, who run Chaminade, for help. Leaders of the order have attended meetings requested by the parents to provide advice, said Brother Kenneth Hoagland, principal of St. Martin de Porres grammar school in Uniondale and nearby Kellenberg Memorial High School. Hoagland said that while the order may not be able to take over any of the schools, it could help guide them to a new model in which lay people run them.
"We would like to see a new type of model that would help Catholic schools survive," Hoagland said. "Having heard some of these parents, they definitively have the passion to do it."
The Diocese of Brooklyn is carrying out a similar plan in which laypeople take over diocesan schools and run them independently as academies, said Stefanie Gutierrez, a spokeswoman for the diocese.
St. Martin de Porres was about to close when the Diocese of Rockville Centre called the Marianists in 2004 two weeks before the start of school. The principal had quit in July, enrollment was plummeting and four classrooms were being used for storage.
The Marianists agreed to step in. Since then enrollment has soared from 120 to 440, said John Holian, the school's headmaster. Every classroom is filled with students.
Still, the Marianists and St. Martin parish provide financial support to keep the school going -- about $200,000 a year each, plus funds raised by a yearly appeal the Marianists send out to supporters. Hoagland said the subsidies are made because the school serves a fairly low-income area and does not want to raise tuition beyond the average $4,500.
A few miles away in Freeport, the Christian Brothers are running The De La Salle School, which serves about 65 mostly Latino and African-American boys in grades 5 to 8. The order keeps the tuition low at $750 a year, said Brother Thomas Casey, the school's executive director.
Most of the school's yearly expenses of $650,000 come from donations and fundraisers, Casey said. The school is in the former Holy Redeemer Catholic grammar school, a diocesan school that was closed in 1995 because of low enrollment. A section of the school reopened as De La Salle in 2002.
Casey said the school has amassed a $1.3 million endowment to ensure its future, and has set a goal of $5 million in the next five years.
In Old Westbury, four families bought a 14-acre estate in 1959 and asked the sisters of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus to run it. Today the Holy Child Academy has 230 students in nursery through eighth grade, and is run entirely by lay Catholics. Tuition is $17,500 a year, though the school also offers financial aid, said head of school Michael O'Donoghue.
Tuition does not pay all the bills, and the school brings in about $500,000 a year in fundraisers, he said.
The fourth independent Catholic school on Long Island, Our Lady of Grace Montessori School in Manhasset, offers classes for nursery to third grade. It has 192 students and is close to capacity, said Sister Kelly Quinn, the only nun on the staff.
The school was founded in 1968 by the Scranton, Pa.-based Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on an estate donated by the family of J. Peter Grace.
While enrollment dipped a couple of years ago, "we've been able to come back and we're really holding our own," Quinn said.
