Thursday, March 20, 2008

Catholic Courier: Bishop Clark Agreed to Registration Quota for St. Patrick's

The Catholic Courier reports that St. Patrick School in Owego has met a quota for new registrations (55 students in K-5), and will remain open for the 2008-09 school year. St. Patrick's was one of two non-Monroe County schools that Bishop Matthew Clark identified in mid-January as being "at risk." The other, Holy Family in Dansville, will close come June.

While we applaud the efforts of St. Patrick's families to keep the school open, we must ask why the same opportunity to meet a registration quota was not given to the 13 Monroe County Catholic schools who will be forced to close come June? Perhaps we'll never know, as the Diocese continues to hide behind closed doors, refusing to make public its task force report.

Related coverage:
Press and Sun Bulletin
News 10 Now

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am happy the St. Patrick's will remain open, but why is a school with 56 students considered viable when schools with over 200 students committed to register for next year were not given a second chance? They even have the 2,950 tuition rate that the diocese claims they can't offer if one or more of the closed schools remained open.

ss19 said...

Back when the announcement was made of school closings, 2 schools outside of Monroe County were named "at risk" by the Bishop. Supposedly he can recommend the closing of these schools, but he cannot close them. (Canon law???) The Pastors get to decide whether the schools will remain open or not. Obviously, the Owego Pastor and possibly his advisors felt that the school should remain open. The other school, Holy Family in Dansville, will be closing in June. Holy Family has larger numbers than Owego, but the Pastor and his advisors have chosen to close it.

Anonymous said...

So many question, with few answers. There is no logic to this whole situation. Owego stays open, Dansville with more students than Owego closes, and schools with 4 times the number of students closes....and is that why they won't release the final report locked away in the Diocesan office.

What does this all remind me of, let's see...Watergate...do we need an official investigation to get the truth behind the closings....

Bishop Clark stand up and be a leader!! Give us the truth! Don't you think you owe these 14 schools the truth?

Remember,THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!