Schools worthy of kids; St. Angela's needs help - South Bronx, New York Catholic school

Commonweal, April 9, 1993 by Patrick F. Kelly

But that's not the story. The story is this: first, local leaders of Catholic education are now responsible for the fate of their program. And second, the ASBCS presently educates over 3,000 inner-city children in neighborhoods most people don't want to get lost in. (Yes, The Bonfire of the Vanities burned in my parish.) What loss will it be to the church and to the city if our programs are forced to close? How many more children of the South Bronx are expendable?

Catholic education has always been subsidized. The sisters of the Order of Saint Ursula labored for more than eight decades at Saint Angela's School without being compensated materially for what they were worth. Up to the present, the archdiocese has provided the subsidy needed to (under)pay the salaries of our dedicated lay teachers. Those who received the service of Catholic education, subsidized first by members of religious orders and now by our lay teachers, have never been asked to fully contribute to this cause. You survived Catholic school? What have you done to contribute to the subsidized education you received? Well, I'm asking: For 3,000 children in the South Bronx, for Saint Angela's 492 kids. The service provided by Saint Angela's School is ecumenical in scope, citywide in the fruits of its positive results, national in its impact, and Catholic in its symbolic and real value.

Several members of Saint Angela's staff, including myself, have undergone training designed to strengthen our business sense, to secure and broaden our financial base, and to change our way of thinking about our status as a nonprofit institution. The Leadership Development Initiative (LDI), funded by the Milken Foundation, has provided the tools to move our program forward. The Milken Foundation is a non-Catholic foundation that has helped dozens of inner-city schools, Catholic and non-Catholic, to set up programs to insure fiscal and program health.

At Saint Angela's School, we are now actively seeking alumni and friends to help our children. A reunion is scheduled for the spring of 1994, to celebrate the school's ninetieth anniversary. Foundations are being researched. We're happy to act on behalf of our children, but anyone in the field of non-profit development programs will tell you it takes years to secure a return on the investment.

Catholics now possess the highest per capita income of any group in the United States. As Andrew Greeley points out, however, Catholics, compared to non-Catholics, contribute a relatively tiny fraction of this bounty to our churches and schools. The bald fact is, Catholic schools in the inner city are the most visible, and arguably the most effective, instrument by which the church reaches the marginalized of American society. They are a tool for quiet evangelization, a sign of our solidarity with the dispossessed. It will not be to our credit, as stewards of the church's material and spiritual resources, if we allow Catholic education in the inner city to shrink and wither and grow less vital. Here, in the South Bronx, it means providing for schools such as Saint Angela's.