miércoles, febrero 09, 2005

Iglesia Católica cierra 22 escuelas en NYC

Otro clavo más a la cruz reporta hoy en The New York Times.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced the biggest round of school closings in the history of the city's Catholic education system today, citing plummeting enrollment, escalating costs and the shifting demographics of neighborhoods across Brooklyn and Queens.

Twenty-two Catholic elementary schools in the two boroughs, with a total enrollment of more than 4,000 students, will shut their doors for good at the end of the school year, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio announced. The decision slashes the number of schools in the diocese by 15 percent.

The schools, like Transfiguration in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Ascension in Elmhurst, Queens, have been cornerstones of their neighborhoods for decades, some for more than a century, and have provided a critical refuge and stepping-stone for children - Catholic and otherwise - in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.

But the schools lost an average of one-third of their students in the last five years, diocese officials said, as the demographics of the city's Catholic school population skewed poorer and the deepening shortage of nuns and priests drove up salary costs for lay teachers and administrators..."

La decisión final fue debido a los altos costos que se dispararon al disminuir el número de esclavos, o sea, las monjas y padres. También un tercio de los alumnos se fueron en los pasados 5 años, justo en el momento cumbre de los escándalos de sacerdotes pederastas. Nadie puede culpar a esos niños por haberse ido de la escuela...

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