By Pete Stidman
News Editor

St. Brendan Parish will not be a part of the sweeping plan to regionalize Dorchester and Mattapan's eight remaining Catholic grammar schools, its pastor said this week. After meeting with parents, teachers, and parishioners on Tuesday evening, Rev. James Fratus told the Reporter that St. Brendan School would opt out of the neighborhood-wide reorganization process called the 2010 School Initiative and remain a parish school.

"The parents are not against a regional model," said Fratus, "but they really feel that for St. Brendan's, the best model would be to remain a parish school. Many children are still within walking distance."

"We're fine with that," said Archdiocese of Boston spokesman Terrence Donilon. "We don't want anybody to come along with this journey if they feel they want to remain a parish school."

St. Brendan's parents had what was perhaps the most negative reaction to an archdiocesan presentation of several school-closure scenarios that have been shown to all eight schools' parents and parishioners during a series of briefings that began last Tuesday.

Plans call for Cardinal Seán O'Malley to make the final decision on the reorganization before the end of this month.

"It's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors," said one young mother while striding out of the school after the presentations last Wednesday, well before Fratus made his decision. She, like many parishioners, refused to attach her name to any criticism of the archdiocese. "They already know what they're doing. It's a done deal."

Donilon denied the Reporter entrance to all of the meetings, saying the archdiocese wanted to inform all of its parishioners before a story was published. Collecting parishioners' reaction to the plans was thus limited to asking opinions as people left the meetings to walk home or head for the parking lots.

"We understand that this building is old," said Josefina Terrero, a St. Kevin School parent encountered after a briefing at the Columbia Road school last Thursday. "Everyone is saddened by the fact that St. Kevin's is going to close. It seems like a lot of the other schools are on the other side of Dorchester."

Given the figures provided to parish school boards by the archdiocese and obtained by the Reporter, it's easy to see why Terrero might be resigned to a closure. In 2006, the data showed that some 47 percent of St. Kevin school's students had subsidized tuitions and over a third of the classrooms were not used. But because much, or all, of the information that committees used to make their decisions (outside of estimates of renovation and building costs) were provided by the archdiocese, some questioned its validity.

"At the end of the day there are parents who are going to say: 'Let's go it alone,' because we don't know that any of the information we got was correct," said City Council President Maureen Feeney, a Catholic who lives only a block from St. Brendan, where her children went to school.

There is little debate, however, over the idea that something must be done to prevent financial disaster in the schools' futures.

At St. Peter School on Bowdoin Street, some 60 parents calmly but forcefully spoke against their school's closure, according to meeting attendees.

"It's a good school and it's really unfair. It's the backbone of the community," said Errol Earle, father of four, with three attending St. Peter. "First [my kids] came here for the change [from Boston Public Schools], now they're going back. They love this school."

Most of the parents the Reporter interviewed at St. Peter said public schools would be their only option if the school closed, particularly because many don't have cars or other ways to easily transport their children to another section of Dorchester. The 2010 Initiative consultant team estimates that 80 percent of all students from closed schools would stay in the Catholic system, but so far, the archdiocese has not addressed the transportation issue.

St. Peter is unique in that it has the lowest tuition of all the schools, at $2,500, and the highest rate of tuition subsidization, at 88 percent of all students. The school serves many of the pupils breakfast, lunch, and dinner and provides a great deal of after-school programs, including a teen drop-in center.

"One might say that's a strong argument to keep it open," said Feeney.

The notion of the church's mission to help the poor is complicated in the 2010 Initiative discussions by those who argue that the chief mission should be to provide Catholic education for Catholics. St. Peter, Blessed Mother Teresa on Savin Hill Avenue, and St. Angela Merici in Mattapan have the highest percentages of students needing financial aid, but they also have 70, 75, and 79 percent Catholic populations, respectively, according to the committee document, as compared to St. Brendan's 95 percent. St. Mark and St. Gregory have the lowest percentages of Catholic students, at 54 and 57 percent. The latter pair are considered among the least endangered by their own parishioners.

By the numbers, a St. Brendan closure would have broken up what seems to be one of the last self-contained parish communities in Dorchester, where walking to school remains common. Some parents did say - before Fratus's decision was made - that they might consider moving to the suburbs if the school closed.

"I live in the city by choice. There's a sense of community here. It would be very easy to move to the South Shore somewhere," said a father of three children, including two who attend St. Brendan School, after Wednesday's meeting. He gave his name only as Shaun. "I really don't like that option, but it's on the table. I wouldn't want to uproot [my kids] when they're in the later grades."

The governance of a parish-run St. Brendan School would include an advisory board of directors for the school, in addition to the traditional pastoral leadership, and it would give the archbishop a superintendent-like role over the pastor. Curriculum was also likely to be influenced by that of the "2010" schools, said Fratus.

Funding would be separate. St. Brendan's new board would be responsible for any capital campaign to renovate the school. The school broke even last year, according to Fratus, making it the most self-sustainable of all the schools.

Other schools aren't so lucky, according to data provided to the Reporter this week by one of the parish-based committees charged with devising specific proposals for school closings. That document - which itemized school budget figures and other statistics - shows that all eight schools, with the exception of St. Brendan, operated in the red in the last school year, several &endash; St. Mark, Blessed Mother Teresa, St. Kevin, St. Peter, and St. Gregory -deeply so. Currently, parish schools that experience a budget shortfall from tuition and other revenues have relied on subsidies from inside the parish, from the archdiocese, and from other charitable sources to make up the difference.

Asked if the St. Brendan's opt-out would affect any of the plans on the table, Terrence Donilon responded by e-mail:

"The opt-out should have no major impact on the plan. The goal of the 2010 Initiative is to strengthen, enhance, and improve Catholic education in the Archdiocese. To do nothing in meeting this goal is not an option… which is why it is so important for us to work together."

Many parents who feel their schools are likely to stay open came out of the meetings wondering what it will be like inside the new "2010" schools.

"I went to St. Gregory's as a child and my daughter now goes here," said Debbie John. "We feel confident that our school will be named as one of the four [regional schools]. I'm a little skeptical about the curriculum. I think you need parent input in that."

The new schools, whether there be three, four, or five left of the seven still participating in 2010, will be governed by a single board of directors and a superintendent. The curriculum would be created by a "consultative process" between principals, teachers, and a curriculum specialist, said Donilon. Tuition would be "levelized" and there's a possibility that subsidies would be increased if the plan becomes successful.

After attending at least five of the 2010 meetings, and many others with representatives of the archdiocese, Feeney said even she didn't have a clear enough picture of where the process is going.

"I don't know," she said. "It's not going to be the parochial system of my youth. Before we spend all these millions of dollars, can we spend a moment talking about what goes on inside these schools?"

It's far from the only question being asked in Dorchester's Catholic circles. What will a closed school mean for the future of a parish? If a school closes, will that church's attendance at Mass suffer? Will parishioners there still support Catholic education? And what will become of any surplus school buildings?

Controversy still swirls in Columbia-Savin Hill, where abutters have voiced strong opposition to the demolition of the now-empty St. William's parish complex, closed since 2004. Viet-AID, the community development corporation that now owns the old St. William's property has said it may have to abandon its plans to develop housing there and try to sell the property to recoup the $2 million it spent for it last year.

Because school closings are yet another bump in a long jarring road that has tested not only the financial strength of the archdiocese, but also its parishioners' willingness to trust in its leadership, broader questions are also rising.

"It's not the spiritual side of my religion that I'm worried about," said Feeney, "it's the human side."

The PowerPoint presentation from this month's 2010 Initiative meetings is now online at rcab.org.

Related articles on this topic

Parents weigh Catholic schools fate in meetings 10.25.07

Publisher's Note: An apology to Saint Mark's parishioners
& an explanation on our role in covering this story 10.25.07

Editorial: Tough decisions need to be made, bring great anxiety 10.25.07

Catholic church briefs parents on regional school plan 6.14.07

Church promises to "slow down" school consolidation process 2.21.07
Editorial: We Stand By Our Story 2.22.07

Archdiocese eyes closure of four Catholic grammar schools 2.14.07