Catholic Schools

Further juggling its schools to handle the fluctuating number of students, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore announced plans yesterday to shift Our Lady of Pompei High School to the vacant Holy Rosary School building in the fall.The move, which had been planned before the archdiocese closed the Holy Rosary School in 1997, "will bring greater strength to our educational efforts in the city," Cardinal William H. Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore, said yesterday at a news conference at the Holy Rosary School in the 400 block of S. Chester St., near Fells Point.

Helen Martha Gilner, a former nun who taught for more than 30 years in Roman Catholic schools and later worked with the needy in Baltimore, died Tuesday of leukemia at the home of her sister, Del. Elizabeth Bobo, in Columbia. She was 68.Independent-minded Ms. Gilner once was chastised by a superior for not moving quickly enough through a math textbook. She argued that it was more important for students to clearly understand a few basic principles instead of racing through.Another time, a monsignor publicly criticized one of her students for a poor report card, and she intervened in the student's defense.

Martin J. O'Malley, who has dubbed his mayoral campaign the "corner campaign," probably wasn't envisioning a corner like this when he declared his candidacy two months ago.It is 7: 30 a.m., and he is standing where two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows meet in a Canton Cove condominium. The backdrop looks more like some Hollywood version of Baltimore than the real thing. The sweeping view of the harbor is nothing less than jaw-dropping, but gawking is not the purpose of this breakfast.The purpose is money.

ST. JANE FRANCES School in Riviera Beach will close out its celebration of Catholic Schools Week at 6: 30 tonight with a family bingo night sponsored by the Home School Association.The week has been packed with activities to spotlight the efforts of the students, parents, teachers and administration, said Rene Hammond, assistant principal.Monday, the school dedicated its technology network system. Ronald Valenti, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and Nancy Gilroy, assistant superintendent, joined visitors, staff members and local business donors for the ceremony, during which 26 computers were added to the school's network.

Halting a seven-year climb, Catholic school enrollment in the Archdiocese of Baltimore showed no significant growth this year, with only 19 more students in 101 schools this fall than last.Enrollment in the Catholic schools in Baltimore City dropped about 300 students, after two years of increases, while some suburban areas continued to show growth. Overall, there are 35,993 students in Catholic elementary and high schools across the archdiocese.Archdiocesan officials say the numbers were expected.

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS Week will be celebrated today through Friday at St. Philip Neri church and school at 6401 Orchard Road.Programs built around the theme "Catholic Schools: Restoring Faith in Education" are planned for the students. Some of the events are open to parents, neighbors and friends.An open house will be held in the school building from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. today. Registration for new students will be accepted.Tomorrow, "Imagimime," a pantomime troupe, will put on two shows for students, one for kindergartners through fourth-graders at 9: 30 a.m. and one for fifth-through eighth-graders at 10: 30 a.m.It will be classes as usual during an open house from 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday so that visitors can see the school in action.

Catholic and Jewish speakers at a conference on the role of religion in politics and society found yesterday that many of their ideas mesh, but they diverged on one major issue: school vouchers.At the conference in Baltimore, a representative of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops advocated the use of vouchers to send African-American children to inner-city Catholic schools."If there is a societal will that the urgencies of the inner city are such that they need to be addressed, one can and ought to work together in the local community to find a constitutionally agreed way to exploit the resources of the Catholic schools that remain open in those communities," said Eugene J. Fisher, director of Catholic-Jewish relations for the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Faced with declining numbers of priests and nuns, Cardinal William H. Keeler urged teachers in Catholic schools yesterday to "rebuild the feeder system" to seminaries and convents that once existed in parochial schools.Speaking to about 2,100 teachers and administrators at the annual Archdiocese of Baltimore Catholic Schools Convention, Keeler asked them to pray daily in their classrooms and to encourage young people who show an interest in the religious life."The need is for us to rebuild the feeder system that existed 20 years ago but in a time of confusion fell apart," he said in remarks during the opening prayer service.

Catholic schools are hooked on phonics.Over the decades -- as fads in reading instruction have come and gone -- Baltimore-area Catholic schools, like many other parochial schools across the nation, have held to teaching children to read by first focusing on the sounds that make up words and sound-letter relationships.In stark contrast to most public schools, which in the 1980s tended to forsake teaching sounds for an early focus on reading stories, virtually all of the 70 elementary schools in the Archdiocese of Baltimore teach phonics as a separate subject in the early grades.

IN 1839, an angry crowd attacked a Baltimore Carmelite convent for three days.They had been roused to action by the preaching and publications of Robert Breckenridge and Andrew B. Cross, both virulent anti-Catholics whose writings on the topic read like hysterical conspiracy theories and outlandish fantasies.While anti-Catholicism, like racism and anti-Semitism, is a well-known part of this country's history, less is known about how such bigoted views were tied to the enactment of laws that affect every American today.

Grant will aid minority, rural communities University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers received nearly $5 million in federal stimulus money from the National Institutes of Health to create two programs to improve health for minority and rural communities. A $2.4 million grant will create a national Bioethics Research Center, which aims to confront ethical issues in research and how those concerns affect minority health. The center, a partnership with Bowie State University, will address a historic lack of trust that some minority groups have when it comes to medical research by seeking ways to increase minority participation in clinical trials.

Eight Maryland schools, including six public and two parochial, were awarded the National Blue Ribbon School status yesterday by the U.S. Department of Education. The distinction is given to schools that have made significant improvement in closing the gap between minority and white achievement or schools whose students have a high level of achievement. Since 1982, 165 public and private schools in Maryland have received the national designation. The eight most recent winners include two Catholic schools, two public high schools, two public middle and two public elementary schools.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore released standardized test scores Thursday for the first time, showing that students who attend Catholic schools in the region score significantly above the national average. Middle-school students had the highest scores. Seventh-graders scored in the 73rd percentile nationally, meaning they scored better than 72 percent of other students on the math and reading portions of the Stanford 10, a nationally recognized test given to thousands of students across the nation.

The likely closure of Towson Catholic High School is heartbreaking for the affected students and the entire community. Sadly, though, this is just the latest episode in the ongoing tragedy of urban Catholic education. For decades, Catholic schools in American cities have been disappearing, but in recent years the pace has accelerated rapidly. In the last decade alone, more than 1,000 Catholic schools nationwide have closed their doors for the last time. The Archdiocese of Baltimore has lost 13 schools since 1998 (including both archdiocese-run and, like Towson Catholic, non-archdiocese-run schools)

The fight over the fate of Towson Catholic High School escalated Tuesday when the alumni association filed suit against the school's parish and its pastor over the abrupt closing of the school. The group is seeking an injunction to keep the school open at least another year. "This closing is a slap in the face to the alumni and to anyone who ever loved this school. We were ready to remedy this through various options, but we could not get the archdiocese to the table," said alumni association president Paul Mecinski, who announced the lawsuit at a rally last night.

Towson Catholic High School was not the first parochial school in Baltimore to close, and given declining enrollments and a tough economy, it most certainly won't be the last. But it would be hard to imagine a school doing a worse job of handling such a difficult situation. The abrupt announcement, coming less than two months before school is due to resume, left students and faculty alike scrambling to find placements for the fall. The school's leadership made no attempt to reach out to alumni for help before the closure, and it has made no effort since to explain itself to the justifiably angered community.

Catholic schools need saving It is interesting that Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas are both products of the Catholic school system in the U.S. Both came from backgrounds of material hardship yet both were provided with the education necessary to succeed. Unfortunately, in Baltimore we are witnessing the dismantling of this Catholic school system in poor and marginal areas of the city. Recently, the Archdioese has announced the closing of St Mary's School in Govans. This school has struggled financially for many years but has been an important part of the local community.

St. Mary of the Assumption School, a 135-year-old Catholic school in Govans, will be closing at the end of this school year, according to Sean Caine, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The kindergarten through eighth-grade school, which has suffered declining enrollments in recent years, was $1 million in debt and needed additional funds from the archdiocese to meet payroll this year, said Caine. "It has served needy children in the area and those families, while they sacrifice a lot, aren't able to pay full tuition, and it puts a heavy burden on the parish," Caine said.

Glen Arm woman is killed in single-vehicle crash A 69-year-old Glen Arm woman was killed when her car left Dulaney Valley Road and struck a fence and trees late Monday, Baltimore County police said yesterday. Diane St. John Eckholdt of the 4300 block of Manorwood Drive was pronounced dead at the scene north of Stone Hill Road near Loch Raven Reservoir. Police said her 1993 Mercedes-Benz 300D was northbound on Dulaney Valley Road when it crossed the center line, went off the roadway and rolled over after hitting a wooden fence and several pine trees.

Although I am a graduate of Catholic schools, I oppose any form of tax aid to faith-based schools ("Catholic schools in dire straits," Dec. 5). In referendums held in 1972 and 1974, Maryland voters rejected even minor forms of tax aid to faith-based schools, and millions of voters in 25 referenda from coast to coast have defeated proposals for public assistance to faith-based schools. Tax aid to faith-based schools pays for separating kids by religion in institutions that discriminate in admissions and hiring in ways that would not be tolerated in public schools.