Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Archbishop Dolan planning to restructure parochial school system: Closings ahead

Today's New York Times ran an article titled Cutbacks Part of Plan to Save Parochial Schools. Instead of closing schools by necessity as they fail, Archbishop Dolan plans a pro-active administrative restructuring intended to preserve the life of the system rather than to default to a slow and piecemeal death. The biggest departure from history is to centralize the system rather than have the parishes administer their own schools.

The most controversial point seems to involves splitting the schools from their parishes financially. The article states:

"For example, parishes forced to close schools have long been allowed to keep the money from the sale or rental of those properties, since in most cases the buildings were built and maintained with parishioners’ dollars. Those proceeds provide a financial cushion that has helped sustain many struggling parishes.

Under Archbishop Dolan’s plan, however, all proceeds would go into a commonfund for the education of children throughout the archdiocese."

I wonder how this will work under Religious Corporation Law?

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