Catholic Schools' Mission to Serve Needy Children Jeopardized by Closings

The challenges of keeping Catholic schools open in working-class neighborhoods were brought home last February 2005, when the Archdiocese of Chicago announced it would close 23 elementary schools and merge or consolidate four others in June 2005. Two weeks earlier, the Diocese of Brooklyn in New York City decided to close 26 elementary schools in Brooklyn and Queens at the end of the school year, although four will be reopened as regional schools. Such announcements are raising grave concerns over the toll that rising costs, changing demographics, and declining enrollments are taking on the longtime Roman Catholic mission of providing schooling for needy children. Chicago's Catholic school closings will affect 4,187 children. Since it was set up in 1986, the Big Shoulders Fund in Chicago, a nonprofit organization independent of the archdiocese, has raised $138 million for Catholic schooling. This school year, it is giving $14 million to 103 of the neediest schools in the archdiocese. The archdiocese subsidizes operating costs of its schools by about $6 million each school year. Such financial support was not enough to keep afloat the schools slated for closure in Chicago. In fact, 18 of the 23 schools scheduled to close are beneficiaries of Big Shoulders.