In a scenario all too common for river ward residents these days, yet another Catholic school is facing closure because of dropping enrollment and dwindling finical support.
This time, it is St. Anne's at Memphis and Tucker streets, a kindergarten-through-8th grade school that has served Fishtown, Port Richmond and Kensington for 155 years.
Pastor Joseph Brandt said the parish simply can no longer afford the high cost of running the school.
"The parish can no longer afford the rising cost, and families can't afford a higher tuition," he said during an interview on Friday, Oct. 23.
The only way the school might be saved is if the parish raises $100,000 by the end of December - no small task to save a school with an enrollment of only 194 students.
Brandt said discussion of a possible closure first came up in September, when the school's enrollment, in a steady decline for years, finally dropped below 200.
With so few students, he said, the bills have been pilling up.
Just to pay annual insurance costs for the school, rectory, church and ancillary buildings, all located at a complex along Lehigh Avenue and Memphis Street, the parish needs almost $100,000.
In September alone, Brandt said, the electricity bill for the complex was $4,600.
"We're putting a lot of money into all of our buildings to keep them open, but we're bringing in so much less," he said. "People in this neighborhood have kept a wonderful church, but at no small cost. Now, we'll probably have to close."
In order to keep the school open for another year, Brandt said he would need to secure $100,000.
Even then, the school would need $100,000 in contributions every year to ensure continued operation of the school.
Raising tuition, he said, was out of the question.
"Tuition would go so high, we'd just lose people anyway. Affordable, quality Catholic education is what we've been trying to do," he said. "But, it has to be a business some time. We have to pay these bills."
The loss of Catholic schools is an increasingly common occurrence throughout Philadelphia.
Just this month, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced it was closing Northeast Catholic School for Boys and Cardinal Dougherty High School.
Last year, Port Richmond's Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady Help of Christians and St. Adalbert schools combined their enrollments into one school, Our Lady of Port Richmond.
St. Anne's attempted a similar pact with nearby St. Laurentius and Holy Name of Jesus, but couldn't make it work. St. Laurentius and Holy Name, both in Fishtown, merged in 2006, with Holy Name students moving to St. Laurentius.
"If they would have come here, that would have saved us," he said of a merger that would have included St. Anne's.
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