#17 NYC Catholic schools to close due to COVID-19 impact

A total of 17 city Catholic schools will permanently shutter due to the suffocating economic impact of the coronavirus crisis, officials announced Thursday.

With countless working-class parents thrust into unemployment, hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition bills have gone unpaid and registrations for the upcoming academic year have plunged, officials said.

“Children are always the most innocent victims of any crisis, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception,” said New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan. “Too many have lost parents and grandparents to this insidious virus, and now thousands will not see their beloved school again.”

The wreckage includes some of New York’s oldest and most venerable parochial schools, including the 90-year-old Our Lady of Pompeii in Greenwich Village.

“This is akin to having a death in the family,” said Joe DiMarco, who graduated from the Bleecker Street school in 1959 and whose children and grandkids also attended. “This rips a hole in the fabric of the community.”

The Archdiocese of New York, which runs schools in Manhattan, Staten Island and The Bronx, said 11 of its buildings will permanently close their doors. The shutterings will impact 2,500 kids and 350 employees, officials said.

The Diocese of Brooklyn, which also oversees schools in Queens, announced that six of its buildings will close.

“This is an incredibly sad day for our Catholic community to have to close these schools, but the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic is insurmountable. The difficult decisions come after the intense analysis of the financial picture of each academy,” said Thomas Chadzutko, superintendent of schools.

The Diocese of Brooklyn said more than $600,000 in tuition payments is still outstanding from this past year.

The organization said it will attempt to enroll impacted kids in other parochial schools and will offer a $500 subsidy to assist those families with tuition at Catholic alternatives.

Parochial schools have seen declining student populations for several years, and officials said the COVID-19 calamity was insurmountable for many of them.

Catholic schools have long been relied upon as an affordable alternative to public schools for families of modest means — especially in low-income neighborhoods.

DiMarco, whose grandmother helped lay down the school’s cornerstone in 1930, said families are now scrambling to find alternatives with only a few months to spare.

“People are distraught,” he said. “People are crying. We’re supposed to be a family. We feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us.”

A total of six schools will close in the Bronx, four in Queens, three in Staten Island, and two each in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

“This is a very sad day for everyone in the extended Catholic school community,” said Thomas Deegan, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of New York. “I send my love and prayers to the families, teachers, principals and staff of the affected schools.”

DiMarco argued that inadequate marketing of Catholic schools has contributed to their demise.

“This school helped to settle a lot of immigrants into this city,” he said. “And it still did. Not Italians as much anymore but other people who came here.”

Now 74, DiMarco said he’ll find it difficult to walk past his old building.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it,” he said.