The Diocese of Brooklyn will close two Catholic elementary schools at the end of the school year.
File photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Facing low enrollment and a dire financial situation, two Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn will close permanently at the end of the current school year, the Diocese of Brooklyn announced on Thursday.
Salve Regina Catholic Academy in East New York and St. Catherine of Genoa-St. Therese of Lisieux school in Flatbush, which both serve students from pre-K to eighth grade, will shutter at the end of June. A third Catholic school, St. Matthias Catholic Academy in Queens, will also close.
“The difficult decisions to close these schools were reached after a thorough review of the pattern of student enrollment and the financial condition of each academy,” said Deacon Kevin McCormack, superintendent of schools, in a statement.
Neither school was able to reach fundraising and enrollment goals set this spring, their boards of trustees wrote in a pair of letters posted online, despite “countless hours of work” from staff and volunteers.
Catholic school enrollment has been falling for 25 years, the trustees wrote, and the cost of running a Catholic school has been steadily rising — as has “debt to outside agencies.”
For the 2023-24 school year, tuition for St. Catherine-St. Therese started at $5,240 for Catholic students, and $6,020 for non-Catholic students. At Salve Regina, tuition for the 2021-22 school year — the most recent year for which information is available online — started at $4,250, plus roughly $350 for registration and other fees.
Enrollment at Salve Regina has fallen by more than one-third over the past decade, according to the Board’s letter. The school had 565 students in 2014, and just 193 in the 2023-24 school year. Only 143 students have registered for next fall, well short of the school’s goal of 225.
St. Catherine-St. Therese, meanwhile, had 319 students in 2014 and…
Read the full article here
