What has happened to these schools in the Cleveland Metro area???? (Ada: houses, catholic schools)

[reretarff]

It all leads back to the city of Cleveland. As the crime went up, schools got worse, whites were leaving, and people were moving to the suburbs, the city of Cleveland suffered. The schools are now bad, there is lots of crime, and there's abandoned houses and buildings.

The only way that Cleveland can one day be at it's original quality as it was back in the early 1900's is for more people to move here.

We've caused our own problems by developing the suburbs. We all moved to the suburbs, so now the city of Cleveland is suffering. If we all move back to the city of Cleveland, then the suburbs will suffer. We're in a dead end now. The only thing that can fix it is for more people to move to Cleveland.

[bluecarebear]

Or they tear down the houses and create more metroparks!

[vicket]

Don't forget, there was a significant shake up in the Catholic Church. I don't think it is just in Cleveland that religious school attendance is down.

[greenvillebuckeye]

Originally Posted by vicket

Don't forget, there was a significant shake up in the Catholic Church. I don't think it is just in Cleveland that religious school attendance is down.

true. i kinda checked out toledo a little bit and cincinnati some. i need to give cbus, dayton and akron a once over here.

[greenvillebuckeye]

Youngstown Cardinal Mooney (1978) - 1,159 students
Youngstown Ursuline (1978) - 1,185

Youngstown Cardinal Mooney (2014) - 557 students
Youngstown Ursuline (2014) - 411 students

[greenvillebuckeye]

on a personal note having never attend catholic school i do however feel like we've lost something here. or are beginning to lose something. to me there is always something nostalgic and to me at least romantic about not just the large urban middle class public high school but certainly the large urban middle class catholic high school as well. in big cities like cleveland and chicago and new york, etc..... a lot of these catholic high schools defined their ethnic neighborhoods.

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by greenvillebuckeye

on a personal note having never attend catholic school i do however feel like we've lost something here. or are beginning to lose something. to me there is always something nostalgic and to me at least romantic about not just the large urban middle class public high school but certainly the large urban middle class catholic high school as well. in big cities like cleveland and chicago and new york, etc..... a lot of these catholic high schools defined their ethnic neighborhoods.

Those neighborhoods are, for the most part. gone. Family size is smaller as well.

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by vicket

Don't forget, there was a significant shake up in the Catholic Church. I don't think it is just in Cleveland that religious school attendance is down.

I don't think the ''shake-up'' in the Catholic Church is a cause of declining enrollment in the schools. Many urban Catholic schools have enrollments full of public school refugees.

[jlawrence01]

Originally Posted by greenvillebuckeye

I did some research on school enrollments for private schools (catholic) in the cleveland metro area as far back as 1978 (ODE EMIS website has all the enrollment data) and it's amazing how many of these schools have closed their doors and how some of them are barely hanging on by a thread.

how and why has this happened? now i understand public schools have lost enrollments too obviously. certainly some of this is on par with those public decreases.


just curious is all.

That is an easy one. I am a graduate of a Cincinnati Catholic high school and the story is similar.

1) When I started Catholic high school in 1974, tuition was $400 per year. Tuition is now somewhere in the range of $8-12k per year. That is hard for a lot of families even with financial aid.

2) At that time, nearly ALL my friends lived in the Cincinnati Public School district. Most parents did not want their children in failing schools. These days, all my friends have moved their families the to suburban areas that I lived in. The public schools in those districts are competitive with the Catholic high schools.

3) As an addendum to that point, parents feel that they are paying additional property taxes to live in those areas, why not use the schools?

4) The average family size in my Catholic grade school and high school was about 3.8 kids. Is it two children these days, maybe less.

5) In the 1960-70s, nearly 40% of the school staff consisted of members of religious orders (male and female). On average, the religious community was paid under $400 per month per member (religious order members are under a vow of poverty and are NOT paid directly. They do NOT pay social security nor do they collect it.) Labor costs among lay members was slightly less than their counterparts in public schools BUT back then, all teachers were paid a lot less than today.


That should explain the decline.

[SquareBetterThanAll]

Originally Posted by reretarff

We've caused our own problems by developing the suburbs. We all moved to the suburbs, so now the city of Cleveland is suffering. If we all move back to the city of Cleveland, then the suburbs will suffer. We're in a dead end now. The only thing that can fix it is for more people to move to Cleveland.

Suburbs are a plague across the US. It's been pointed out that we seriously lack an influx from immigration, which has shored up the populations of central cities the country over.

Would LA, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, Atlanta, on and on and on, be the way they are without the significant influx from immigration they receive? No. People booking it for the suburbs and crappy central city public schools are practically a given in any major city in the US.