Parents, faculty puzzle over 'why'

BY KAREN DIETLEIN
STAFF WRITER

Tesi Bohok blinked back tears recently as she offered a string of raffle tickets to a customer during Cohoes Catholic School's annual -- and last -- Parent/Grandparent Luncheon.

"Oh, I'm dying, I'm heartbroken. I just want everyone to know that we didn't let our parishes down," she said, referring to the parents who sent their children to the school.

The parents of the 73 students still in attendance at the last Catholic school in the city of Cohoes are staunch in their devotion to the school and dispirited to hear of its closing at the end of the academic year.

Looking for answers

Parents and teachers alike are wondering how the situation at Cohoes Catholic devolved to the point where closing became necessary:

* Some parents, like Jack Hebert, "don't like it but understand why" the closing is happening. "You can't run a school with only 73 children," he said.

* Judy Howe, who has four children at the school, wishes that it could have found "more financial assistance" and that the school would have been "better publicized" within Cohoes parishes.

* Sandilyn Rivet, mother of Autumn, 6, has nothing but praise for the school's program -- which groups children in classrooms according to academic ability and level rather than grade and age -- but noted that "people are scared of change, and they've never experienced something like this."

Why it happened

Jane Kromm, principal, said the switch to multi-age education was done "to see if we could reach a new group of people. This was only the second year of the program; it might have grown. We don't know."

For school secretary Marilyn Hanrahan, the enrollment drop -- and subsequent closing -- is attributable in part to a damaging rumor that has been floating around the community since her daughter, now 24, was in the seventh grade.

"We lost families because they were afraid the school would close," said Teddi Bullock, social studies and language arts teacher, outlining the rumor. "You could not fight the rumor."

Vicious cycle

According to Sister Jane Herb, IHM, diocesan superintendent of schools, "part of [the explanation for the closing] is that we get caught in this cycle: If the enrollment goes down, then the perception of the community is that the school does not have a future."

For Cohoes Catholics, said Mrs. Hanrahan, that cycle might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Twenty-five years ago, some teachers here said it was like a cancer -- that the parents will kill the school by not believing in it," she said.

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