Monday, August 30, 2010

St. Jude Now a Regional School

I just learned in reading the Parish Times, that St. Jude's is now a regional school, and no longer solely a parish school. In addition, there is a slight name change "St. Jude Regional Catholic School," which of course gives those who fought to keep the name of St. Jude a win. (New uniforms it looks like too.)

The other sponsoring schools are: St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Derwood and Our Lady Queen of the Americas in Washington, DC. This agreement formally establishes St. Jude School as a regional school in accord with new archdiocesan Policies for Catholic Schools.

However, what I find most interesting is that the letter from Bishop Knestout was sent on June 21, 2010 but it seems to have been only formally announced to the larger Archdiocese this past weekend. It looks like the St. Jude website was updated with this in mid-August.

I did not see it in the Catholic Standard and if I missed it, would someone let me know. I don't know how that one got by if it did.

The bigger question is: Will this help or will this hurt? Only time will tell but I do believe that this is just the beginning of the end of parish schools in this diocese.

For those who raised over $95,000 to keep St. Jude's going. How do you feel about this? Would love to hear from you -- pro or con.

Update: For those who are intersted, St. Francis is apx. 7.5 miles from St. Jude's, while Our Lady is apx. 12 miles away. Now, there is only one reason why these schools have joined w/ St. Judes -- that I can see -- and it is not because this is he closest school. Nope, it is because the monthly assessment is lower, than if they did not partner.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did not see anything in the Standard about this either.There seems to be a lot of things going on this Summer. Do you think there was some effort to get some things done before the new Superintendent was in place? Remember, Dr. L'Homme began on July 26 (according to the June 28 news release from the Archdiocese) July 26 was the day the Archdiocese released the news that there would be a school which would be granted status as a Catholic school. I believe it was an all girls middle school in Southeast DC. Do you think someone did not want the new guy to have input on these matters?

A WASHINGTONDC CATHOLIC said...

It is possible that they wanted the changes to take place before the new Super came in. In this manner, he can say it took place before he arrived and had nothing to do with it. Gives him deniability.

However, I do see this is a larger trend -- and the policy paper laid it out -- fewer parish schools (unless they can totally fund it) amd more "regional" schools.

St. Jude's is a real stretch in my opinion..considering there are many closer schools to Our Lady of the Americas than St. Jude's.

Anonymous said...

"However, I do see this is a larger trend -- and the policy paper laid it out -- fewer parish schools (unless they can totally fund it) amd more "regional" schools."

Or you could say, the rich folks will have their own parish schools, while the poorer areas will "regionalize".

What really bothers me is the fact that the Archdiocese will not come out with the truth about what they are slowly putting into place. They way they are going about it SMACKS of the way our federal government works (and I don't mean that in a good way).

Isn't great how our Archdiocese allows St. Raphaels in Potomac MD to build a brand new school while just a few miles away (on the other side of the tracks), schools are facing closure.

Ahh, have the days of the Pharisees and Saducees come to haunt us once more?