Archdiocese to close two parish schools in Boston as part of system overhaul
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff
Five parochial schools in Dorchester and Mattapan will be combined into a regionalized Catholic system, with renovated buildings, a reworked curriculum, and higher teacher salaries, under a plan that officials from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston outlined tonight to elected officials.
Archdiocesan officials said they will close two of the eight parish schools in the area -- St. Peter, at Meeting House Hill, and St. Kevin, at Uphams Corner. Those are two of the more troubled sections of Dorchester, but archdiocesan officials said the church remains strongly committed to serving the poor, and said that all but two of the surviving schools also serve significant numbers of low-income children.
The officials said the archdiocese will spend several million dollars upgrading the Bowdoin Street After School Program and Teen Center located at St. Peter's as a demonstration of its commitment to the area. They also said that the archdiocese hopes that the pupils of St. Peter's and St. Kevin's will attend another Catholic school, and said they will seek to provide transportation assistance to make that possible.
"No one is serving the poor more than the Catholic schools, even at what would appear to be fewer buildings," said Jack Connors Jr., the retired advertising executive who is heading a committee that is advising the archdiocese on how to shore up its struggling urban schools, which, like many Catholic schools around the nation, have been losing students for decades.
City Council President Maureen E. Feeney, who attended the briefing, expressed sadness but understanding at the decision to close the schools.
"There are fiscal realities that none of us can ignore," she said. "It's unfortunate that any school has to close, but the cost of maintaining and running these schools has brought us to this point."
Feeney praised the archdiocese for pledging to invest in the St. Peter's Teen Center, which she said was an important resource for multiple families.
The archdiocesan plan, which has been approved by Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, will combine five parochial schools, now overseen by parish priests, into one regional pre-K-8 school system, called the Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy, with campuses at the five parishes -- St. Angela in Mattapan, St. Ann in Neponset, St. Gregory in Lower Mills, St. Mark in Fields Corner, and Blessed Mother Teresa near Edward Everett Square.
The new system will be overseen by a regional board and a regional director, modelled after a system put into place this year in the Brockton Catholic schools.
The committee headed by Connors is pledging to raise $50 million to $60 million to refurbish the surviving Dorchester and Mattapan schools, boost teacher salaries, and provide ongoing teacher training. The committee expects by 2010 to extensively renovate or replace the school building at St. Ann's, which will require moving those students elsewhere during a yearlong construction phase, and to permanently relocate the students of Blessed Mother Teresa from the school building at the former St. William's parish, in Savin Hill, to the school building of the former St. Margaret's parish, on Columbia Road.
The school at St. Brendan Church, in the Cedar Grove section of Dorchester, will remain a parish school; that school declined to be part of the regionalized system.
The eight schools currently educate about 1,600 students. Archdiocesan officials are hoping that by improving the quality of facilities and curriculum, they will be able to increase enrollment at the surviving six buildings.
The Connors committee plans next to turn its attention to individual schools or clusters of schools that request assistance with planning; it is already consulting with a parish school in Gloucester.
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.
