8 D.C. Catholic Schools Eyed for Charters

The move by Wuerl to consider the charter route stems from a decade of financial losses at 12 inner-city schools known as the Center City Consortium. The consortium was set up after a 1995 archdiocese study recommended closing or consolidating several city schools.

Then-Cardinal James A. Hickey insisted they remain open, so the archdiocese formed the consortium as a way for the schools to save on administrative costs and pool fundraising resources. Although they have improved academically, they have continued to lose money despite $60 million in diocesan and private donations.

Of these 12 consortium schools, eight would be converted to charters managed by a single secular entity selected by the archdiocese. The four others would remain Catholic.

The recommendation came after a year of study by a committee of 40 parents, teachers and other archdiocese officials that considered a school's enrollment, the number of students who were Catholic, projected deficits and other factors.

Wuerl, who has been in Washington for 14 months, previously served as bishop of Pittsburgh, where he gained a reputation as a tough-minded administrator -- closing nearly a third of the diocese's 320 parishes and eliminating a $2 million deficit -- and an education innovator. He sought funding from the business community to set up an endowment for needy schools, raised tuition and opened regional grade schools to replace smaller elementary schools.

Soon after he arrived in the District in June 2006, Wuerl said he heard from Catholic education officials that the inner-city schools were no longer financially viable. Part of the reason was that many poor families were choosing charter schools, which are free.

"One by one, families left to go to charters . . . and it was a kind of steady drifting away," said Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Roman Catholic Church in Southeast Washington, whose parish school, which dates to the 1920s, would be converted to a charter.

But Pope said it is a better alternative than shutting down. "At least we'll be able to serve children in some capacity in our neighborhoods."

Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said he has spoken to Wuerl about the proposal and described the seven-member appointed board as "open to the possibility" of the conversion schools.

Turning religious schools into secular charter schools can be difficult. In Chicago, public schools chief Arne Duncan asked an independent Catholic school to open a charter school several years ago. The Catholic school San Miguel has opened two secular charters.

"There are church-state issues," Duncan said. "But if you're really trying to innovate and think outside the box, they are absolutely surmountable."

The Archdiocese of Washington's struggle with shrinking enrollment is not unique. More than three-quarters of Catholic dioceses in the country have had flat or falling enrollment in elementary schools for the past seven years, according to a study last year by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The decline has accelerated in recent years because of several factors: smaller Catholic families, urban Catholics' moving to the suburbs, weakening attachment of Catholic families to a Catholic education -- and, more recently, the Catholic clergy sex-abuse scandal. As a result of the drop, the study found, hundreds of Catholic schools in such cities as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have closed.

Many suburban dioceses, such as that in Arlington, which includes all of Northern Virginia, have largely escaped this trauma. There, school enrollment has swelled 25 percent. The diocese has opened eight elementary schools because of rapid growth in the area's outer suburbs and rising numbers of Hispanic Catholic immigrants in the closer-in suburbs.

At dismissal yesterday afternoon, girls in plaid jumpers and boys in crisp white polo shirts and blue shorts streamed out of Immaculate Conception in Northwest Washington, which is scheduled to be converted. Cabdriver Fayera Sobokssa's lips stretched thin as he contemplated the idea of his 11-year-old daughter, Sana, attending a secular school.

"That's why I brought her here," Sobokssa said as other parents nearby nodded in agreement. "I would be much happier if they keep it."