This is called Deleveraging. Something the failed banks and certain other industries were not allowed to do at the behest of paid politicians. In the long run this will be a good thing.Can't argue with that, as sad as it is for the folks in these schools.
That’s still a lot of schools to close all at once. Here in DC, many Catholic schools closed as their congregations headed to the suburbs. The Church kept some open, at great expense, as missions to the inner city. There has recently been a major retrenchment in this area. But urban Catholic schools that have retained their paid tuition base are going strong, often as consolidations of several ancestral parish schools.
If Philly is closing 44 elementary schools at one time, it sounds like they resisted consolidation far too long.
“In the long run this will be a good thing.”
It is a horrible thing that will cost vocations, force Catholic children into the secular school system, and break parish ties that are generations old. We’re dealing with the death spiral of our own Catholic school system here in NJ, because the hierarchy won’t aggressively pursue public school relief for parents who would opt for Catholic schools. There are many other Catholic institutions that should close before schools; the effects of this down the road are being ignored.
Pastors could always press parishioners for funds to support a parish school; what resonates as strongly as that? I give time, but not money, to my Church; they’re much better off than I am financially.