Archdiocese to close two parish schools in Boston as part of system overhaul

November 29, 2007 · Print This Article

Five parochial schools in Dorchester and Mattapan will be combined into a regionalized Catholic system, with renovated buildings, a reworked curriculum, and higher teacher salaries, under a plan that officials from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston outlined tonight to elected officials.

Archdiocesan officials said they will close two of the eight parish schools in the area — St. Peter, at Meeting House Hill, and St. Kevin, at Uphams Corner. Those are two of the more troubled sections of Dorchester, but archdiocesan officials said the church remains strongly committed to serving the poor, and said that all but two of the surviving schools also serve significant numbers of low-income children.

The officials said the archdiocese will spend several million dollars upgrading the Bowdoin Street After School Program and Teen Center located at St. Peter’s as a demonstration of its commitment to the area. They also said that the archdiocese hopes that the pupils of St. Peter’s and St. Kevin’s will attend another Catholic school, and said they will seek to provide transportation assistance to make that possible.

“No one is serving the poor more than

the Catholic schools, even at what would appear to be fewer buildings,” said Jack Connors Jr., the retired advertising executive who is heading a committee that is advising the archdiocese on how to shore up its struggling urban schools, which, like many Catholic schools around the nation, have been losing students for decades.

City Council President Maureen E. Feeney, who attended the briefing, expressed sadness but understanding at the decision to close the schools.

“There are fiscal realities that none of us can ignore,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that any school has to close, but the cost of maintaining and running these schools has brought us to this point.”

Feeney praised the archdiocese for pledging to invest in the St. Peter’s Teen Center, which she said was an important resource for multiple families.

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