Our Woman of Perpetual Assist Catholic Academy will shut this summer time.
Picture courtesy of Google Maps
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Low enrollment and monetary struggles will carry the tip for one more Catholic college in Brooklyn this summer time.
Our Woman of Perpetual Assist Catholic Academy in Sundown Park will completely shut on the finish of the varsity 12 months in June, its Board of Trustees introduced final week, greater than a century after it opened.
The Okay-8 academy has been going through “unsustainable enrollment and financial trends” for the final 5 years, in keeping with the Diocese of Brooklyn. In 2020, 174 college students attended OLPH. In the course of the 2024-25 college 12 months, simply 111 college students attended, and solely 85 have been enrolled for the upcoming 12 months.
The college has handled declining enrollment for not less than 5 years. Picture courtesy of Jim.henderson/Wikimedia Commons
With enrollment so low, OLPH would have been spending greater than twice the price of tuition on every pupil, per the Diocese — tuition runs $5,500, and the per-student expenditure would have been $11,600.
The Diocese performed a “thorough analysis” to see if the varsity could possibly be saved, mentioned Deacon Kevin McCormack, superintendent of Catholic faculties in Brooklyn and Queens. However the “pattern of student enrollment” and the academy’s monetary state of affairs made restoration unimaginable.
“Since 1917, Our Lady of Perpetual Help has been educating students in both the faith and academics, and this decision to close will not erase the success of the past 108 years,” McCormack mentioned.
The Diocese will work with OLPH households to make sure college students could be relocated to close by Catholic faculties, in keeping with the a from the Board.
“St. Ephrem Catholic Academy, our closest partner school, has been especially generous in preparing to welcome our students and keep the spirit of OLPH alive,” the letter states. “We are committed to assisting every family in furthering their child’s education in a Catholic setting.”
The college 12 months will end as deliberate, the letter says, and college students will nonetheless obtain their First Communion and Affirmation. The Basilica of Our Woman of Perpetual Assist, the church hooked up to the varsity, will keep open.
About 13 lecturers are at the moment employed at OLPH, per the varsity’s web site. John Quaglione, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Diocese, mentioned lecturers looking for positions at different Diocesan elementary faculties “will receive support” of their purposes, and mentioned all principals are requested to provide precedence to school and employees of a faculty that’s closing. The closure will possible additionally influence the Regina Opera Firm, which has operated out of OLPH’s auditorium since 2012. Regina didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
OLPH opened as St. Alphonsus College in 1903, and had not less than 1,204 college students by 1910, in keeping with the varsity’s web site. Our Woman of Perpetual Assist Excessive College, on the similar location because the academy, closed in 1994.
The college would be the fourth Catholic college to shut in Brooklyn within the house of a 12 months.
In 2024, the Diocese closed the beloved Visitation Academy in Bay Ridge, as there have been solely two nuns remaining on the Visitation Monastery, which sponsored the varsity. It additionally shuttered Salve Regina Catholic Academy in East New York and St. Catherine of Genoa-St. Therese of Lisieux.
Bishop Robert Brennan of the Brooklyn Diocese with college students at St. Ephram’s final month. Picture courtesy of John Quaglione/DeSales Media
Salve Regina and St. Catherine-St. Therese have been compelled to shut as a consequence of “the pattern of student enrollment and the financial situation of each academy,” McCormack mentioned final 12 months in a press release practically similar to the one issued about OLPH.
New York Metropolis’s Catholic faculties have been struggling for years, although Catholic college enrollment throughout the nation has remained largely regular. Nonetheless, Catholic faculties within the U.S. have misplaced 14.2% of their pupil inhabitants for the reason that 2013-14 college 12 months, in keeping with a latest report by the Nationwide Catholic Academic Affiliation, and the variety of Catholic faculties in city areas has been declining for many years.
Dozens of Catholic faculties in New York Metropolis have closed since 2020, together with six in Brooklyn in Queens. Final month, the Archdiocese of New York introduced it could shut two Catholic faculties within the Bronx and that the buildings could be taken over by a constitution college.
Constitution faculties have gotten steadily extra in style within the U.S., in keeping with the Pew Analysis Heart, as enrollment declines in public faculties. Enrollment at New York Metropolis public faculties remained flat this 12 months, in keeping with Chalkbeat, however consultants anticipate it’ll drop precipitously within the subsequent decade.
