Saint Brendan School on East 207th Street, Bronx NY, will close at the end of this school year, 112 years after it was founded and 98 years after moving to its present location, due to a decision by the Archdiocese of New York. After a six-week "Save Saint Brendan School" campaign by the students it was announced that it will be replaced by a charter school, Success Academy. Read more below the images.

Click the first image to enter the photo gallery. Photos by me except the ones credited to Norwood News (the local newspaper).

New York City was once famous for its stellar public education system; for example take a look all the famous graduates of DeWitt Clinton High School. But now, after endless cutbacks and attacks, incursions by charter schools, and ever-increasing bureaucracy forced upon teachers and the resulting burnout, most public schools are barely functional and many families have lost confidence in them. Charter schools are iffy because the standards for teachers are lower than for public-school teachers and because charters tend to exclude "high-needs" students and to expel students for arbitrary reasons to make their results look better. So for many working families — Catholic or not — Catholic schools are the best choice. Throughout my long lifetime they have been famed for offering an excellent, rigorous education at low cost compared to increasingly unaffordable private schools. But recent years have seen a rash of Catholic school closings due to "shifting demographics", lower enrollment, and the COVID epidemic.

On February 16th, the Superintendent of Schools of the Archdiocese of New York announced that 12 more Catholic schools would be be closed at the end of this school year, six of them in the Bronx, including St. Brendan's on my block. The only other Catholic school in the area, St. Ann's (a few blocks away) closed several years ago and St. Brendan's absorbed its student body (as of 11 September 2023, St. Ann's is The International Leadership Charter Middle School... It's like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers around here!). Other recent Bronx closures include Saint John's and Visitation schools in Kingsbridge, Saint Luke's in Motthaven, St. Thomas Aquinas in West Farms, Nativity in Eastchester, Assumption in Pelham Bay, Sts. Philip & James in the East Bronx, and perhaps others. Without Catholic schools, where can low-income families send their children to get a good enough education to perhaps allow them to rise out of poverty as they could before the attacks on public education? Government at every level has failed these families.

Update 4 April 2023... Now we know: the space is being taken over by the Success Academy charter school chain. It's good that there still will be a school here instead of (say) luxury condominiums; St Brendan's will receive rent payments so they can keep the building. But what will happen to St Brendan's students and teachers? And what will the new school be like? You can get an idea from reading some of the references below.

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