Ron DeSantis on Staten Island, and the Closing of a School

I visited my family on Staten Island this past weekend. When I was there, it was announced that Ron DeSantis was going to be visiting Staten Island on Monday morning to speak to a police group. Sure enough, that event took place on the very southern tip of the island in a catering hall located in deep red territory.

Here is a MSM report of the event that took place this morning:

While I was there, there was another surprising bit of news. It was announced that St. Christopher’s School, where I attended for seven years from 2nd through 8th grade, was going to be closed by the New York Catholic archdiocese.

Catholic churches and schools in northern urban areas have been closing in fairly significant numbers over the last decade or so. Why? Several factors:

• changing demographics;
• competition from charter schools;
• increasing secularization;
• higher tuition costs, in part because there are hardly any more nuns to do the teaching; and
• decreased trust because of the scandals involving priests within the denomination.

These schools, however, previously provided an excellent, affordable education for the children of first and second generation immigrant parents– often of Irish, Italian, Polish and/or German descent. The people who ran these schools– especially the nuns– might have been tough as nails, but they cared deeply about the final product for which they were responsible.

There was no open knowledge that this particular school was in trouble financially, but apparently it was. And this was despite the fact that another school that had been closed previously— St. Margaret Mary’s, one town away– had merged into St. Christopher’s several years ago.

Even though I am no longer Catholic, I am a bit concerned when religious schools are failing because they are much better for kids– and for our country– than public schools.