Catholic schools face closing

Archbishop Wuerl has proposed making eight of the twelve inner city schools in his diocese into charter schools to save them from closing down completely.1 This would entail changing the names of the schools and removing religion from the curriculum. Once upon a time, a parish would offer free or nearly free tuition, running the school on general parish funds, and making ends meet because nuns, sisters, brothers and deacons do not make as much as lay staff. As lay teachers and administration replaced the religious, the operating expenses rose. Many parishes could no longer afford to pay for all of the school's expenses, and started charging and raising tuition. Apparently the archdiocese of Washington D.C still heavily subsidizes the students' tuition, but with free charter schools, parents are pulling their children from the Catholic schools to save money.

This is entirely understandable, parents have so many struggles and sacrifices on their plates as they try to raise their children. This is especially true of our inner city poor. That is why I am not as upset about this proposal as I could be. If the choice is between closing the schools and secularizing them, then by all means secularize them. The students will get a lesser education, but hopefully still better than that in the public schools available to them. Still, I hope this is not a result of the diocese expecting the schools to support themselves. That is an all too common perspective (it seems to me) for a pastor to have, and one that I believe is at best suboptimal if not outright wrong.