I had a very interesting conversation with someone today from St. Mark's Parish.
This person, I will call her "Marge" told me an interesting story. "Marge" has a child/children at St. Mark's (now part of St. Francis International).
When the issue of closing St. Mark's School was announced, earlier this year, the Archdiocese of Washington told the school that they could remain open, as long as they raised $90,000.
The parents killed themselves and raised $87,000. When they went to the Archdiocese, they were told that the school would close, even though they were short $3K.
She asked me if I had any idea where the money raised would have gone? The only thing I could tell Marge was to ask the pastor. I can only speculate that it was to pay down the debt.
In addition, they have less than the 500 enrolled currently at St. Francis, which was stated in the Catholic Standard last week. She figures, that there are just under 400 (give or take a few) at the schools. Remember, there are two buildings.
In fact, a letter went out from the pastor of St. Mark's announcing layoffs of one of the principals and vice-principals due to the low enrollment earlier this week.
I bet you won't see that in this week's Catholic Standard.
Don't let it be said that I did not warn you of this.
2 comments:
I think I've seen this comedy before. Back in the 80s my high school merged with another one across town. Two years later the new school, All Saints was closed.
All the former ICA and St. Anthony parents were completely broadsided.
That a phony enrollment number would appear in the Catholic Standard is no surprise. Remember some time ago when The Standard tried to fool it's readers into believing that St. Thomas More school in southeast D.C. was "about 40% Catholic." The Archdiocese must have been feeling a little heat about giving so much financial assistance to schools that have virtually no Catholic children, so they decided to let a false statement be made in our official newspaper. Shame on the Archdiocese. It would be good to have some of those millions the church squandered on the consortium schools, wouldn't it. I know where we could have used $3,000 dollars worth.
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