Five South Jersey Catholic schools to close permanently

Five South Jersey Catholic schools — three elementaries and two high schools — will close for good at the end of the school year, the Diocese of Camden announced Friday.

Good Shepherd Regional Elementary in Collingswood; Wildwood Catholic High School; Cape Trinity Catholic School in Wildwood; and St. Joseph Elementary and St. Joseph High, both in Hammonton, have had dwindling enrollment and community support, the diocese said in a news release.

Officials said the decision was “sobering and painful” but necessary, given the schools’ financial realities and the hit the economy is taking from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The administrations, faculties, families, and donors who have supported these schools should be commended for their efforts to keep these schools open and accessible,” spokesperson Michael Walsh said in the news release. “However, the decreasing priority given to Catholic education by many parents, including Catholic parents, ultimately weakened the viability of these schools.”

Each school enrolls fewer students than it did five years ago. Good Shepherd’s enrollment is 108, down from 154 in 2015, a 30% drop. St. Joseph Elementary enrolls 94, down from 191, a 50% drop, and St. Joseph High has 206 pupils, down from 331, a 38% decline. And the combined enrollment of Wildwood Catholic and Cape Trinity is 337, down from 382, a 12% drop.

The schools’ finances have also suffered. The three elementary schools have received $3.8 million in total over five years from the diocese and their local parishes; Wildwood Catholic has received $750,000, and St. Joseph High has received loans totaling $1.1 million but has an outstanding debt of $6.6 million.

Diocese officials said they expected the economic downturn to compound the schools’ problems.

“Closing a Catholic school is gut-wrenching for everyone involved, from the principal and pastor to the superintendent and bishop,” said Bill Watson, superintendent of schools. “However, as stewards of the financial resources entrusted to us, we came to the difficult conclusion that low enrollment at these schools caused the strain on the funds available to become too great.”

Watson said students from the schools will be welcomed at nearby Catholic schools.

News of the schools’ closures rippled through affected communities.

In a letter to St. Joseph Elementary families, school leaders noted that the timing was “especially painful as our school community continues to navigate the impact of the coronavirus.”

Wildwood Catholic and Cape Trinity had been planning to combine into Wildwood Catholic Academy.

“These plans and hopes, unfortunately, have been scuttled due to the devastating realities of the coronavirus pandemic,” school administrators wrote in a note to students’ families. “Our already tenuous enrollment estimations have diminished, our abundantly hopeful fund-raising expectations look rather bleak, and our growing debt unsurmountable.”

New Jersey school buildings are closed and students are learning remotely at least through May 15. Should Gov. Phil Murphy order schools closed through the remainder of the year, Walsh said, the schools would seek to have some kind of event to mark the closures.

Like all other schools, “we are in holding patterns as to when and how these activities may commence, if they can commence,” Walsh said. “We are hopeful that the pandemic may lessen to the point that health professionals and elected officials will be able to offer options for these kind of events.”