Two Catholic schools in Montco to merge

Two Catholic elementary schools in Montgomery County will merge in the fall, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced yesterday.

Queen of Peace parish school in Ardsley and St. John of the Cross parish school in Roslyn will be combined at what is now the site of Queen of Peace, 835 North Hills Ave. The name of the new regional school has not been announced.

The schools' combined enrollment was 507 in the 2001-02 academic year but has dropped by more than 40 percent to 303 students, said Donna Farrell, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese.

The move is the latest in a series of Catholic school closures and mergers announced throughout the region as church officials grapple with the perennial problem of changing demographics, including population shifts and lower Catholic birthrates.

Last week, the archdiocese announced that St. John Bosco School would close in June. That school has a Hatboro mailing address but is in Warminster, Bucks County.

The archdiocese announced in January that four Bucks County parish schools would consolidate at the end of this academic year. The four are Immaculate Conception in Levittown, Queen of the Universe in Levittown, St. Frances Cabrini in Fairless Hills, and St. Joseph the Worker in Fallsington. The consolidated school will be housed in the Queen of the Universe building.

The archdiocese also has said Cardinal Dougherty High School in Olney and North Catholic High School in Frankford will close at the end of the current academic year. However, the archdiocese has permitted a group of business leaders, North Catholic alumni, and representatives from two religious orders to study the feasibility of converting that school to a private Catholic academy.

Catholic schools in South Jersey are feeling the pinch, too. Earlier this month, officials in North Wildwood announced that Wildwood Catholic High School would close at the end of the spring semester. And the Diocese of Camden closed Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Regional School in Barrington last June.

During weekend Masses, the Rev. John D. Reardon, pastor of St. John of the Cross, and the Rev. Lawrence F. Crehan, pastor of Queen of Peace, announced that Cardinal Justin Rigali had approved a recommendation to create a regional school.

"Both Queen of Peace and St. John of the Cross have long traditions of offering high-quality Catholic education," Rigali said in a statement. "Now, those exceptional schools will combine powerfully into a new regional school that will serve our students well and build upon" the schools' legacies, he said.

In September, the two parishes had asked permission to study the feasibility of merging their schools.

Farrell said the study committee unanimously concluded that creating a new regional school would enable the parishes to pool resources to create "the strongest school possible."