Sunday, September 26, 1999
Archdiocese faces growth
New parishes possible
BY SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
As the Archdiocese of Cincinnati grapples with growth in parts of its 19-county region, it faces problems bedeviling other urban-based Catholic school systems trying to serve shifting populations, experts say.
Those problems include hir ing and retaining teachers fast enough when they can make better money at public schools; attracting teachers and administrators to heavy growth areas; and meeting demands for Catholic education in suburbs.
A report released by an archdiocese consultant and approved by its Commission on Education this week called for a move of Middletown's Fenwick High School into fast-growing regions east of Interstate 75. It also suggested building more elementary schools in Warren and Butler counties between Interstates 75 and 71.
Although the recommendations must be approved by the Most Rev. Daniel E. Pilarczyk, archbishop of Cincinnati, the archdiocese might soon be swinging away from closing parishes — as it has done several times in Greater Cincinnati in recent years — and toward building them.
“We have an office of planning and research, and that's the office, in conjunction with the Ministry 2000 process, that has been making decisions about parishes that need to be closed,” said archdiocese spokesman Dan Andriacco. “That office is more likely in the future going to be part of decisions about parishes that need to be opened.”
Any decision to open a parish would have to come through the archbishop. The location would be determined by local requests and a demographic study by the planning and research office and other archdiocese officials. The parishes then could decide whether they want to build a school.
“For everybody, the public schools as well, it's difficult to manage these bulges in population, probably more so for the schools than the churches,” Mr. Andriacco said.
The number of people in the archdiocese is moving but growing.
The Catholic population in all 19 counties stands at 547,000, compared to about 400,000 10 years ago, Mr. Andriacco said.
The pressure on the schools can't be judged by those numbers. Although the archdiocese is the 26th-
largest in the country, its Catholic school system is the ninth-largest.
More than 42,100 children attended Catholic elementary schools in the archdiocese last year and almost 15,900 attended high schools.
But the need for more schools in the northern county suburbs won't affect those in Hamilton County, he said.
“All our schools in established areas are doing well,” Mr. Andriacco said, with one exception, in Springfield.
Besides, the study's recommendations call for a multimillion-dollar campaign to raise money that would help pay for new schools. Each parish then is financially responsible for itself, without affecting others.
Decisions to close parishes are based on whether sacraments are taken there regularly.
To open parishes and schools in new areas is no easy task, as other systems around the country are learning.
“In North Carolina, Atlanta and the southeast, the Catholic Church can't accommodate the demand because the personnel is not in place,” said Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at University of Notre Dame.
“It is difficult to expect bishops to work together to start saying, let's shift leaders there. You rely on per sonnel (who are) born and raised in that part of the country.
“It is not an interstate kind of trade.”
Even tougher for Catholic schools, he said, is finding and keeping teachers, who are paid much less than they can get in public schools. Today that struggle is harder because 60 percent to 70 percent of teachers and administrators are lay people who expect benefits and good pay, in contrast to priests or nuns who traditionally have worked for less.
“There's higher tuition in some cases” as a result, Mr. Appleby said. “Now there's a push for vouchers and sharing of public funds, though that varies by location.”
At the same time, Catholic schools have become more pluralistic instead of drilling dogma into the heads of students. That, coupled with a search for a moral environment, has made Catholic schools even more attractive to suburban, professional parents.
Whatever the reason, Kenneth Beiser feels the heat. He's principal of St. Susanna Elementary School in Mason. The school has grown by 100 students the past four years to 430 from grades 1 through 8.
“We cannot keep up with the growth,” Mr. Beiser said. They've turned storage rooms into art classrooms and put offices in construction trailers outside the school.
The recommendations to build more Catholic elementary schools are good ones, he said. That would take the pressure off St. Susanna, which is in the middle of a two-year study to learn how to expand both its church and its school.
“In a sense, this is a good problem to have,” he said. “But we also need to find a solution to that problem.”
Reporter Julie Irwin contributed to this report.
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