Restoring a powerhouse

CAMBRIDGE -- A chain-link fence once surrounded Matignon High School, rusted steel grates covered its windows, and potholes pocked the driveway.

The 62-year-old Catholic school became so dilapidated in recent years that its academic reputation plummeted, and it became known as a drug haven. Last year, with just 39 freshmen, Matignon was on the brink of closing.

Next month, it will open as a school on an upswing: 105 freshmen are registered to attend. Howard Redgate, a 1964 alumnus and president of the Board of Trustees, has poured $3.4 million in borrowed money into renovating the school's facade, athletic fields, library, and science labs. He hired a new headmaster and principal, boosted teacher salaries, and is adding Mandarin Chinese and other academic programs to attract more students.

"From the outside, the school looked like it was failing; it was a dump," said Redgate, president of Andover Equity Associates, an investment counseling firm. "But we told the kids last year, 'When you come back to school, you will understand that we are in business and we are here to stay.' "

Matignon's resurrection brings hope to more than a dozen Catholic schools in the Boston area struggling to survive. At least two-dozen Catholic schools in Greater Boston have closed in the last five years amid financial woes and dwindling enrollment.

"So much of it is about leadership," said the Rev. Joseph M. O'Keefe, dean of Boston College's Lynch School of Education and a specialist on Catholic schools. "It's innovate or perish. That's the story now with Catholic education."

To survive, the school will need to tap its alumni for donations to pay off the bank loan secured by the Archdiocese of Boston. Redgate said he must also convince alumni that their money would not be squandered. Last year, a former development director was convicted of stealing more than $150,000 in alumni donations.

The school has not updated its science labs in more than 40 years; the rotting, wooden tables with cracked Formica tops are now gone, soon to be replaced with mahogany lab benches. All 18 classrooms will be outfitted with computerized white boards.

"People had come to expect mediocrity, and that's exactly what was being produced," Redgate said. "We are a private, coed Catholic prep school that had an elite status, and we want to get all that back."

Matignon has a rich athletic tradition and was known as a boys' ice hockey powerhouse in the 1980s and '90s. In recent years, the school has shone in girls' basketball and boys' and girls' soccer, even as its fields became so dilapidated that the school had to rent practice space elsewhere.

A new baseball diamond and softball field, as well as lacrosse and soccer practice fields, now sit atop once neglected overgrown fields, which had not been used for 15 years. The school added a weight and cardio room for students and teachers. And varsity athletes get to change in new locker rooms outfitted with oak lockers and personalized name plates, an amenity typically seen only in college locker rooms.

"What we're trying to do, the God's honest truth, is when the visiting team comes, they say, 'Why don't I have a locker like that?' There's a little bit of recruiting going on," said Redgate, a former high school and college athlete, as he checked the progress of the renovations during his weekly rounds yesterday.

Tom Galligani, the school's new headmaster and 1961 alumnus, and Joseph DiSarcina, its new principal, recruited heavily from area Catholic grammar schools. Both of them are retired administrators from Somerville High School who started at Matignon last year. They brought Matignon students to their alma maters to pitch the school's beefed-up academic programs and new facilities. Approximately 350 applicants sought a spot in the incoming freshman class; two-thirds were accepted, and 105 decided to enroll.

Lisa Bruning of Medford chose Matignon for her daughter, a freshman, because Galligani and DiSarcina's leadership restored her faith in the school.

"I remember Matignon for what it used to be," said Bruning, who graduated from Somerville High in 1983 when Galligani and DiSarcina were teachers there. "I thought, boy, if anybody could turn this place around, it's them."

Founded in 1945, Matignon was run by nuns and for decades educated mostly white Irish-American students from blue-collar families. As the number of nuns declined since the mid-1980s, more expensive lay teachers replaced them. Enrollment peaked at nearly 800 students in the 1960s, but plummeted to 260 last year after the archdiocese spun off its eight regional high schools into financially independent Catholic schools in 2004.

Teachers had accused the archdiocese of union busting, and 17 left Matignon three years ago because they feared for their job security, said Joe Carabello, director of guidance, who has worked at the school for 30 years. The mass exodus caused morale to dip, he said, and teachers punched the clock, going home as soon as school let out.

"We didn't know what our future held," Carabello said. "We couldn't have sustained the school with the number of students we were bringing in."

This fall, the school will enroll more than 300 students, of whom nearly 30 percent are members of minority groups, and hopes to eventually top out at 500. The growing enrollment and accompanying tuition allowed the school to hire nine more teachers. The school has promised not to raise its $7,700 tuition until it becomes highly sought-after again, Redgate said. Success, he said, will mean a long waiting list and more graduates entering top-tier colleges.

"There's a spirit and pride that I haven't seen in a while," said Pat D'Angelo, an English teacher at the school for 20 years. "The seniors said to me on more than one occasion, 'I wish I could start all over again.' "

The chain-link fence is gone from the front of the school. By the entrance, pink, violet, and white impatiens and red begonias sprout from granite planters. Paving stones line the walkway.

William Caddigan's eldest daughter graduated in June, but he is excited that his second daughter has two years left at Matignon. "I told my daughter, 'You're the luckiest kid in the world because you're going to benefit from all this new stuff,' " he said.

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.