The Notre Dame Sponsorship Transition

Jan. 18 Pioneer Press Editorial

Prayers answered as Notre Dame survives

For Notre Dame High School for Boys in Niles, dark clouds loomed last summer when the Congregation of Holy Cross in Indiana made a sudden announcement that they would be terminating sponsorship of the high school here and closing it at the end of the 2006-07 school year.

The school was not without its defenders, including the local advisory board which supported it, the parents and current students, and a loyal group of alumni, representing its half century of graduating classes. Cardinal Francis George also stepped up to the plate at once, urging the archdiocese staff and its school system's administrators to find a way to keep Notre Dame open.

The closing decision came, not from a lack of success of the school's academic programs, but because the Holy Cross congregation -- already stepping back from direct control of the other high schools and the University of Notre Dame which it had once operated -- was setting its sights on new missions in different directions. The congregation was the official owner of the Niles high school campus, and the campus property had been used to secure the debt service for a recent school expansion project. So it came down, in part, to money owed and the obligations to pay it back.

It could have ended there, with sad farewells in the spring, and one more Catholic high school closed for good, gone the way of St. George and Weber and Holy Cross and Marillac and Good Counsel and Madonna. Parents worried there would be one less program devoted to the Catholic education for young men -- looking at the changes in recent years resulting in the co-ed programs at Gordon Tech or Loyola Academy or Guerin College Prep, which had absorbed part of Holy Cross.

The future is much brighter now, as a new executive board takes over for the reconfigured Notre Dame College Prep High School, and specific initiatives are coming into place to keep the school operating for years to come. A quiet but reassuring milestone last Saturday was that Notre Dame held its annual testing day, along with all the other Catholic high schools in the archdiocese, as it always has -- and as it might not have -- been able to do.

Schools which offer a quality education are an important asset to an area, whether public, private or parochial, and the closing of Notre Dame in Niles would have been a major loss.

Parents and alumni and friends throughout the Notre Dame community can take comfort and pride in the speed and efficiency with which the school's advisory board and the archdiocese have been able to develop a workable governance model and a transition schedule which seems to be staying on track and addressing the needs of each of the groups involved. At a forum Jan. 9, the new seven-member executive board was able to answer questions about the transition and reassure the audience that the school will be there with the same goals and Catholic leadership.

As the Priests of the Holy Cross depart, the Rev. Michael DeLaney, who serves as the current president, will also leave. Applications are now being accepted at the school for a new president -- in charge of marketing and development, enrollment and external relations, and the school's Catholic mission. It is a job encompassing administrative and spiritual leadership but not the day-to-day management of the academic program, a job filled by the school's principal.

The crowd was not so big at last week's meeting -- several hundred -- compared to the more than a thousand concerned and upset folks who turned up last July to find out details after the initial announcement that the sponsorship would be dropped. Are less people concerned? No, but there are more people reassured that the school has been saved and is being cared about.

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