Can we reinvent Catholic schools?

Theresa Muniz remembers the nuns in her elementary school as strict, vigorously inspecting her appearance and demanding straight-laced behavior. But in her working-class Chicago neighborhood, her parish school offered what her parents wanted: a good education and reinforcement of the values they held dear.

"My parents wanted me to keep my legs crossed and my mouth shut," she says laughing.

Today the halls of her old school are empty, its doors shuttered a decade ago-a victim, like so many other Catholic schools, of population shifts and new cultural and economic realities.

Muniz' story and a survey of her neighborhood paint the picture of what has been happening all over the country. As more affluent second and third generations of Latino and European immigrant groups move up in the world, they've moved out of the parish and urban environments of their parents and grandparents, leaving behind working poor or new immigrant families who can't support parish schools and the increasing costs of their lay teaching staffs.

During the last few decades, the same story has settled like a shroud over Catholic school systems across America. Since 2000, nearly 30 percent of Catholic schools in cities have shut down and 20 percent of suburban schools. According to a 2008 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-issues think tank based in Washington, more than 1,300 Catholic schools have shut down since 1990. Most of the school closures were in urban areas.

Nationally Catholic schools recorded another 3.5 percent decline in enrollment for the 2008-2009 school year, and another 162 schools closed, according to the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA). There are now 6,028 elementary or middle schools and 1,220 secondary schools, enrolling 2,192,531 students in the United States.

Enrollment declined in all regions of the country, but the largest decreases were centered in large urban areas that were populated by high concentrations of Catholic immigrants in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

But the news is not all bad. Last year 31 new schools opened, and in recent years a few new Catholic schools have opened with innovative funding models that take the financial burden off parents. Experiments have also begun with charter school conversions of old Catholic schools, giving parents disgruntled with traditional public schools more options.

While Karen Ristau, executive director of NCEA, worries the recession may contribute to a new cycle of school closings, a new spirit of creativity and willingness to make tough decisions may also be emerging.

Some are making these moves within the confines of the current system, looking to new funding sources and finding new methods to support existing schools. Others have taken bolder steps: This year New York will be joining Washington in controversial conversions of Catholic schools to public charter schools, as one-time parish institutions shed their religious character in exchange for stable funding.

Still others are doing both. The always controversial voucher programs once held out the faint hope of a new platform of support for Catholic schools. But vouchers seem to have fallen out of favor with the Obama administration's Department of Education, which is declining to continue a Washington voucher experiment.

Greg Naleski, vice president for development in the NativityMiguel School Network, a network of Catholic and faith-based middle schools, insists that may prove short-sighted. Washington needs to take notice of what is happening with Catholic schools, he says. Despite closing schools and declining enrollment, some 2.1 million students still attend Catholic schools.

"What would happen if all the faith-based schools said, ‘We're done' and sent our students to the public schools?" he asks. "The public schools couldn't absorb them. These schools serve a purpose and have a proven model of success."

According to the Fordham Institute, some 300,000 students have been displaced because of Catholic-school closings since 1990. U.S. taxpayers have been on the hook for upwards of $20 billion to pay for public schooling for students left behind by vanishing Catholic schools.

Resurrection models

The decline of Catholic education is certainly not the result of disinterest among families in low-income communities. In many U.S. neighborhoods, parents are desperate for opportunities to send their children to good, safe, values-driven schools, Naleski says. The NativityMiguel School Network, which includes 64 schools in 27 states across the country, helps fill that void.

By focusing on middle school, the founders believe they can change the path of students. "By high school it is too late," Naleski says.

But Naleski says it is not just the strong academics that parents want out of his schools. They're attracted to the strong values that a Catholic school offers. "We provide an urban Catholic education to those who couldn't afford it otherwise. We bring a school to them."

Every day Naleski gets calls from parents and community groups wanting to know how to open a NativityMiguel in their town. But the network is careful about where they put the schools. Before the doors open on a new school, they need to raise about $14,000 a year per student. Only about 5 percent of that cost comes from parents as tuition, though some costs are covered by the volunteer efforts of NativityMiguel parents. The remaining funds come from individual donors.

One key is that each school is its own not-for-profit and has its own board of directors, Naleski says. These board members help fundraise and are instrumental to the schools staying open and viable.

The Cristo Rey Schools Network is another organization serving working class families who can't afford hefty tuition for a Catholic education. Cristo Rey schools rely heavily on fundraising, but they are unique in several ways.

The schools enroll mainstream students, not academic superstars. There is no academic admission test. In fact, if applicants to a Cristo Rey school are already performing at a high academic level, administrators will often refer them to a college prep school.

And school staff do not look just for Catholic students.

"We are doing it because we are Catholic, not because they are Catholic," Robert Birdsell, president of the network, says. "We are doing it to serve the less fortunate, to break the cycle of poverty." 

But the schools do have high expectations, telling students on day one that they are the class of the year they will graduate high school, as well as the year they will graduate college. Students also dress in business attire.

But perhaps the most singular element of a Cristo Rey education is that the students themselves help pay the bills.

Cristo Rey students are out on a job site every week, and in return local businesses and corporations support the school. It costs about $10,000 a year per student, and families make a contribution of $1,600 toward the cost of tuition. The remainder is covered by the students' wages.

"We realized that we couldn't be sustainable on just tuition and fundraising," Birdsell says. "We looked to the other side of the ledger, our students."