Rensselaer school to close in June

This week's celebration of Catholic Schools Week is bittersweet for one school in the Albany Diocese: St. Joseph's-St. John's Academy in Rensselaer has announced that it will close in June.

Frederick Talarico, the principal, said the "writing was on the wall" for several years about the future of St. Joseph's-St. John's; but until now, the school had always managed to squeeze out another year of existence despite falling enrollment and financial struggles.

The decision to close was reached at a Jan. 16 school board meeting. The Diocesan School Board then held an emergency session and recommended to Bishop Howard J. Hubbard that he approve the closing, and he agreed.

Tuition

"I don't think anyone was surprised, because it's no secret that the school was struggling," said Edith Toohey, diocesan assistant Catholic school superintendent. "Fundraising can only do so much."

The school's $3,100 tuition "has been an ongoing problem as far as collecting it and collecting it in a timely manner," Mr. Talarico said.

While the school's sponsoring parishes, St. Joseph's and St. John the Evangelist, worked in the past few years to increase teacher salaries at the school to a just wage, changing demographics in Rensselaer worked against them.

Costs and aid

St. Joseph's and St. John's "are older parishes; there are not many younger families with children, and not many families able to afford the tuition, even though it is minimal," Ms. Toohey explained.

She noted that the school had been struggling to pay its teachers for quite a while, even with financial aid from the Diocese. Although the Diocese offered to continue that aid, the school could not raise its share of the funding.

"It's not that the parishes and the people aren't committed," Mr. Talarico said; "the well just ran dry."

Falling numbers

The decline in enrollment -- from 184 students in 1998 to 84 this year -- was attributed to the migration of families from cities to suburbs. When asked if the current abuse crisis in the Church affected parents' interest in enrolling their children in Catholic schools, Ms. Toohey said she had no statistics on that but "would like to think not."

Mr. Talarico noted that part of the reason the closing was announced during Catholic Schools Week is that students are being encouraged to transfer to two nearby Catholic schools -- St. Mary's in Clinton Heights and Holy Spirit in East Greenbush -- and those schools will soon begin to register students for the next academic year.

"We wanted to give our families a chance" to be first on the enrollment lists, he said.

Teachers are also being given first preference for positions at other Catholic schools in the Diocese, which the principal called "heartening." While the principal is new to St. Joseph's-St. John's this year, some faculty have been there for 18 or 19 years.

Emotions

On Jan. 24, the day after the closing was announced, Mr. Talarico said his faculty, staff and students were sad.

"We gathered for prayer this morning as a school community as we do every Friday, and we discussed with the children that the school was closing, but not closed," he said.

He told the students that "you still have five months of your education to complete" and said the school would try to proceed as normally as possible in its last months.

Still, he said, there was "a lot of buzz" in the hallways from students asking each other, "Where are you going to go to school next year?"

Carrying on

Many were worried about whether their new school would be the same, and what would happen to the building after it was closed. "They're asking if they're going to knock the school down," Mr. Talarico reported. "I assured them that would not happen."

This week, St. Joseph's-St. John's is celebrating Catholic Schools Week as scheduled. Last week, St. Mary's School in Clinton Heights sent doughnuts and a note of support to the school.

"Everyone is just kind of pulling together," Mr. Talarico said. "We still are here; we're not gone."

(St. Joseph's and St. John's Schools, originally separate, both opened in 1864. The pair closed their high schools in the 1970s and merged in 1986 into one pre-K to eighth grade school.)

(01-30-03) [[In-content Ad]]