By Matthew Monks
“I share with a lot of you tremendous grief at this time,” Msgr. Paul Sanchez, head of the parish, told a distraught crowd of more than 100. “This is truly a no-win situation. This is about fundamentally a demographic shift in this neighborhood.”The school, one of nine Queens elementary schools the Brooklyn Diocese decided to close last week, bled hundreds of thousands of dollars as its enrollment dropped from 331 to 186 students between 1999 and now, Sanchez said, shocking many parents who were learning about the problem for the first time. “Why were we kept in the dark?” a parent shouted.His answer: “We always felt that if the parents sensed a problem they would bring their child to a more secure school.”Mt. Carmel received just $674,000 in tuition payments in the 2002-03 school year. This school year it took in just $551,000 – down $121,000 from the prior year. Expenses, meanwhile, hovered around $900,000. Sanchez said the school did all it could to close the gap: It reduced music and art classes to once a week, aggressively recruited new students and stepped up fund-raising efforts, collecting $10,000 from alumni in 2002 and $65,000 in 2004.”Fund-raising can never make up for a shortfall due to declining enrollment,” Sanchez said. “We're graduating 27. Last year we took in four (students). How long can we continue to do this?” Recognizing Mt. Carmel's problem, the Diocese of Brooklyn offered to extend $100,000 in rescue funds in October, Principal Angela Fazio said. But the gift carried a stipulation she said she was initially unaware of that required Mt. Carmel to draft a fresh operating plan by January 2005 to stay afloat in 2006. Fazio and Sanchez proposed reconfiguring Mt. Carmel as an intermediate school by dropping kindergarten through third grade. The plan was rejected. The diocese dropped the ax on Monday after reviewing projections for 2005-06 that showed Mt. Carmel would need a $250,000 subsidy to survive. The following year it would need $300,000. “The faculty and I am heartsick,” Fazio said. “In no way do I feel I held something away from the parents. I did not expect to close.”And she got an explosive applause when she said she still doesn't. “I very much believe in the midnight hour,” she said. “I'm not much convinced that our school should close.”Parents agreed to pay $100 each to reregister early for the next school year, giving Sanchez a projected tuition yield for the 2005-06 school year. They hope the figure might convince the diocese to give Mt. Carmel more time to come up with the $250,000 for next year but diocese spokesman Frank Derosa said this week that all the closures are non-negotiable. Reach reporter Matthew Monks by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
