c. 1997 Religion News Service

NEWARK, N.J. _ The quiet high-ceilinged classrooms of Our Lady of the Valley Elementary School in Orange, N.J., filled with studious girls in plaid skirts and boys in maroon sweaters, contrast sharply with the surrounding neighborhood, where rows of houses are interrupted occasionally by a burned-out, boarded-up shell.

Like many urban Catholic schools heralded these days for low dropout rates and high academic performance, Our Lady of the Valley has struggled financially because its primary mission is educating the children of the working poor.

And with just weeks left in the school year, officials have announced abruptly that the struggle was over. Parents were told that after 115 years of service, the school would close in June.

“I feel really sad,” said Gregory Fletcher, a seventh-grader from Newark, who like others in his class spoke forlornly about not being able to graduate with his friends from the school next year.

“I’ve been here all my life.”

The death of a school, always a traumatic event for those with so much invested, means a scramble for new jobs for teachers and new schools for students. But it’s also part of a larger, recurring story that has seen hundreds of urban Catholic schools close across the country in recent years.

The trend, fueled by complex population shifts and basic economics, is rarely discussed in the highly charged public debate over school vouchers. Supporters of such public subsidies often characterize Catholic schools as the last hope for many urban youngsters.

Even so, enrollment has fallen steadily at many of the schools. A decade ago, roughly 450 children attended Our Lady of the Valley. When the decision to close the school was made, enrollment was down to 208 and only 42 of them had paid to register for next year. Some parents were behind on their tuition payments for this year.”We really fight fiercely to find a way out before we close an urban school,” said Sister Suzanne Bellenoit, assistant superintendent for government programs for the Archdiocese of Newark. “We know we make a difference in the urban areas, but we can’t do it for free.”

In places like Newark and Jersey City, where the public schools were failing so badly the state took them over, it’s not uncommon for 95 percent of a graduating class at a Catholic high school to be college-bound.

But despite frequent assurances by the church that it is committed to providing education in urban, primarily non-Catholic areas, officials concede the mission is increasingly expensive and difficult.

“Our urban schools are the most needed because in many urban areas the (public) schools are not doing the job,” said Robert Kealey, executive director for elementary schools at the National Catholic Education Association. “But the people attending these schools are the poorest in society, and the population of these urban parishes has dwindled.”

When large waves of Catholic immigrants flocked to this country early in the century, they lived, worked and built schools in America’s cities. The children of parishioners went to the church schools, and parents contributed all they could to keep the schools going. As these Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants moved into the suburbs, the student bodies in these schools changed dramatically.

Today, one-fourth of all Catholic school pupils are non-white minorities, and in many urban Catholic schools the majority of pupils aren’t even Catholic. With smaller parishes to support them, rising educational costs _ due in part to the smaller number of nuns available to teach _ and parents struggling to pay tuition, urban Catholic schools have been closing for years.

About 45 percent of Catholic schools nationwide are in cities, but in the past five years their numbers have dropped from 4,010 to 3,725.

In the same time period, eight schools closed in the Newark archdiocese, all of them in urban areas.

Although some urban Catholic schools in the archdiocese are run by religious orders, all but six of the 153 elementary schools are supported by parishes. That means the parish picks up expenses that can’t be covered by tuition, and in some cases the diocese has to help.

In the last fiscal year, parishes in the Newark archdiocese contributed $15.5 million to keep their schools operating, with the archdiocese kicking in another $1.5 million.

At Our Lady of the Valley, where pupils were mostly African-American, 11 of the 208 pupils were church parishioners. Meanwhile, collection revenues at the church had dwindled as the largely Italian, Polish and Irish parish went on fixed retirement incomes. Church donations to the archdiocese fell as well, and in recent years money had begun to flow the other way.

Officials at the archdiocese and the Rev. Floyd Rotunno, pastor of Our Lady of the Valley parish, said the school’s accumulating debt was too much to bear. In the past three years alone, the archdiocese had loaned the school nearly $500,000.

Although that debt was forgiven last year as part of an archdiocese-wide program, the realization that next year’s contribution by the archdiocese would have to be $230,000 made the decision clear.

“Mathematically, it was just impossible,” said Rotunno, who announced the decision in a late-April letter to parents. “The parishioners understood how hard I’ve been working to keep this going. If the slide continued, it would have pulled the parish with it.”

DEA END CHAMBERS