Today, the NY Post reports another parochial school closing in New York City.
The city's first parochial school will be closing its doors in June, church officials said.
The shuttering of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School on Mott Street in Little Italy -- which opened in 1822, when James Madison was the country's fifth president -- continues a troubling trend of city Catholic schools closing in the face of dwindling enrollment.
Every year, it seems the Archdiocese has to contract with their educational program because not enough kids are being sent to catholic school.
With fewer students attending parochial schools it forces an increase to tuition.
Higher tuition forces more parents to pull their kids out because they can't afford it.
With low attendance, the school has to raise tuition again causing more parents to pull more kids out and eventually, the school has to close. Last year, a school in Greenwich Village closed, which upset many parents who will now have to send their child to a public school.
Meanwhile, as more parents pull their kids out and send them to public schools, the public school system argues that schools are now overcrowded and affecting how students learn.
Isn't there a logical sollution to preventing school closures? Well, it's funny, because if the State offered parent's tax credits towards a child's education and if the City provided a voucher program so parent's can pick and choose the school THEY want for their kids, public schools will reduce attendance allowing teachers to teach with smaller classes and parochial and private schools will have an influx of students providing jobs to teachers and an education for each student.
This is the pro-choice argument we need to be making in New York City. The rights of parents to choose for their kids.
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written by chancehaywood , February 04, 2010
I really have no issue with this. Kids travel for miles to attend good schools. If it were a better run institution it would still be open. I'm no fan of vouchers because it take money that shouldn't be in the government system and doles it out like a subsidy.
written by Daniel Peterson , February 04, 2010
Better run system? Government subsidizes education now! And when you read how poorly the system is teaching our kids, wouldn't it be better to take that subsidy out of government's hands and into the parent's hands to make the decision for their kids?
How can a catholic school compete when society is becoming more and more anti-catholic because the pope's teachings are "too conservative to their liking?"
A family with money will send their kid to any school they want. A family without money for their child's education will take the free school route. A catholic school which offers jobs to teachers outside the network of the TU cannot compete in the way the system is currently structured.
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