Sunday, March 23, 2008

MCCS Break-Even Point: 4,000 Students

In a column on page 3 of the Holy Cross Church Easter Sunday bulletin Fr. Thomas Wheeland has some interesting comments. He first mentions that there have been several discussions involving himself, the Holy Cross finance people, the bishop, Fr. Hart and Lisa Passero. Fr. Wheeland then adds,

"The bottom line from all of these discussions is that the 11 Monroe Catholic Schools that will be open have room for all who have registered from the closed schools. That is not what we hear. We also hear questions about class size and the extras that are needed for a school such as computer labs, cafeterias, gyms, music room, etc." (emphasis added)


In my neck of the woods only Our Mother of Sorrows School is being allowed to stay open, despite it already being near capacity and its lack of an adequate physical plant. A couple of parents registering their children there tell me that this school now has far more children registered than they can accommodate, even at 30 children per classroom.

A little later Fr. Wheeland writes,

"At present, they don’t want to permit any more schools to open because it will cause a loss of students from the Monroe County Catholic Schools System. With the new lower tuition structure, they need to have over 4,000 students in the system to meet their budget. If they don’t meet or even exceed that number of registrations, the new system with 11 catholic schools would suffer. This is the reason the Diocese is not recommending the opening of any closed schools, even if they were to be a parish school which is what Holy Cross is trying to do." (emphasis added)


Three years ago, before Bishop Clark allowed Sr. Elizabeth Meegan to introduce a tuition plan that drove hundreds out of the system, Monroe County Catholic Schools had 5,220 students!

The MCCS motto must be "If it ain't broke, work on it until it is."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is dizzying to see exactly how incompetent the diocese and the Bishop are. This borders on criminal.

Here in Corning, we have 1 Catholic School where there used to be three. Granted, our current school has actually seen an increase in enrollment, but that is only because we closed two schools. Though, under this bishop, I'm not sure how good a "Catholic" education my children would have.

Mike Shea said...

cpt tom wrote, "I'm not sure how good a 'Catholic' education my children would have."

A very good question. While we can't be in the classroom with them, we can pay close attention to their textbooks, workbooks, etc., and try to correct any errors we see creeping in.

Not ideal, but better than nothing.