Delco Catholic school will close after all

Only a year ago, the parents and parishioners at Our Lady of Peace in Milmont Park, Delaware County, celebrated saving their small Catholic school.

The rescue proved short-lived.

They learned at weekend Masses that the school would close in June due to a drastic decline in enrollment.

The Rev. Louis J. Kolenkiewicz, the parochial administrator, announced that Cardinal Justin Rigali had approved closing the school at the end of the current school year.

In 2000-01, the school had 262 students. By 2003-04, enrollment had slipped to 227.

This school year, enrollment has fallen to 121 students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Of that number, there are 81 students in first through eighth grades, including only four students in the third grade.

For the last several years, parents and parishioners worked hard to raise money to keep the school afloat and to provide financial aid for families.

Last year, the school won permission from the archdiocese to keep the school open if 132 students signed up. The school opened in the fall even though only 128 enrolled.

"We did our best to keep this school open for several years," Kenneth Southwick, head of the parish's Save Our School Fund, said yesterday.

"However, the dark cloud of uncertainty that rested on the school for five years has deeply hurt . . . ," he said. "No one wants to enroll if they think you are on a year-to-year basis for staying open."

He said it became clear "that running a school with 130 or so kids in the current economy is not feasible."

Parishioners say there are fewer Catholic families with school-age children living in that part of Delaware County.

Because of plummeting enrollment, parents in Our Lady of Peace have been paying one of the highest elementary tuitions of any parochial school in the area - $3,700 a year.

"I am aware of the sadness that this decision will bring to many," Kolenkiewicz said in a statement released yesterday by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. "Despite the best efforts and good intentions of many committed people, and after several years of uncertainty, it is time to make the responsible decision to do all that we can to ensure that our children receive the best Catholic education possible."

Students from Our Lady of Peace will attend Notre Dame de Lourdes School in Swarthmore, less than two miles away.

Kolenkiewicz met with the Our Lady of Peace parents in the fall to tell them he did not believe the school would survive after the current school year. Last month, he asked for permission to close the school in June, and the cardinal approved it.

Catholic schools have seen a decline in enrollment in Philadelphia and the inner-ring suburbs, including swaths of Delaware County. In June 2007, St. Charles Borromeo School in Drexel Hill closed because of a steep decline in enrollment.