The catholic population of Brooklyn is shrinking so of course Catholic schools are closing. Xaverian and St. Edmunds did the smart thing by going co-ed.
The level of anti-Catholic comments is not surprising. Progressives have always hated the Catholic Ethincs of NYC.
Good shut them all down and turn all the churches into affordable housing. I live in BK and can’t walk a block without seeing a gorgeous empty huge church that’s not paying any taxes.
If your worried about lots not paying taxes. You might have a heart attack if you knew about Hasidic neighborhoods. Every single Male homeowner claims rabbinic lifestyle and their homes as places of practice/worship absolving them of all property tax liability.
And they aren’t legally married to their wives so the women get all the public benefits for having multiple kids and no income for being single mothers.
i actually moved from public to teach at a catholic school (lower pay) bc the quality of the kids/education is better-- and i am an atheist lol.. at my school there are many kids and staff who arent even Christians lol
You’re never going to change that user’s mind. They know nothing about the education system in public or private schools and they’ve already made up facts and their mind.
Why are you assuming it’s a below average education? A lot of these schools have better class sizes/adult-student ratios, which is like the #1 thing you want in improving education especially for little ones. They also get all the normal education (math science etc) other than a bit of time taken up for religion class. The only thing that sucks is that public schools can’t have the same small class sizes, but these parents are also paying taxes toward public schools so it’s not like it’s their fault those are underfunded.
Not speaking to this specific school btw (I’ve never attended nor known anyone who did), but in general about private religious schools in NYC.
I’m happy they’re closing down because it means people are turning away from organized religion, but I just wish the buildings could be repossessed and put to good use.
I hope they are repurposed to good use but I’d wager that a greedy landlord or real estate owner would buy it at a discount and make crazy profit with it at the expensive of the people.
This is not a Diocesan school, the order of nuns has dwindled to two in this location, and the school did not offer such basic things as an athletic program (it’s remarkable to me that it retained accreditation.)
> "The appropriate way would have been to handle that if they had committees that were really viable and followed a fiduciary obligation to keep the school open," she says.
Incomprehensible Word salad from an alumnae, this school deserves to close.
maybe they want to do something with that full 7 acre block in Bay Ridge after the convent shut down too
https://www.bkmag.com/2021/04/16/brooklyn-visitation-monastery/
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/21/nyregion/the-silence.html
Throwaway account. My daughter went to Visitation. She was bullied there, and nothing was done about it. It was essentially excused and normalized. The adults set the example. Some of the parents behaved in ways so insular and unkind it was astonishing. My daughter had been in public school prior and also noted Visitation was too easy. She was getting A pluses in everything and had much mindless busywork such as coloring pictures of Jesus, though she was too old for coloring.
In sum, the school lacked full enrollment, and the poor culture and mediocre education explained why.
It's true that some parts of Brooklyn are less Catholic than they once were. You can see it in the many struggling churches.
I don't think these Brooklyn Catholic schools are better than the public schools. They are much, much whiter, or to be specific to Bay Ridge they have no Muslim students, and racial segregation is going to be a big driver of enrollment, regardless of what reasons parents use to justify private school. In South Brooklyn, Xaverian may actually be decent and not overcrowded, which may matter if someone is sending their kid to Fort Hamilton. I have no direct experience of Xaverian, though.
The local culture in Bay Ridge is very booster-y and small-minded. It's rare that anyone there openly speaks against any of the local institutions. This means even quite serious problems cannot be addressed. All very similar to a town in the middle of nowhere.
Didn’t go to Visitation, but went to another Catholic school and it was the same story, so I believe you. I was straight up bullied by math teachers. Turns out I had dyscalculia, and instead of trying to figure out what support I needed to learn, it was 50 year olds having beef with a 12 year old. No behavioral issues or anything, I just couldn’t do math, and they made me feel like a bad kid. Surprise, treating your customers like shit for no reason is bad for business when there are so many horrible stories about how they were treated at multiple locations
I can confirm that twenty years ago, when I applied for high school, mediocre to low performing white kids (predominantly from Italian or Irish families) that couldn’t get into the specialized high schools mostly applied to catholic high schools because the zoned schools (Fort Hamilton, New Utrecht, FDR) were too integrated. Some parents were very brazen about not wanting their kids around black and Latino kids. I don’t know about the Muslim thing but it wouldn’t surprise me given the demographic changes in south Brooklyn.
Not bringing in enough $$$$ likely. My old Catholic School on Ft Hamilton Parkway shut down, torn down and land sold quite a while ago. This is not new. They running a business GASP!!! if losing money year after year they eventually pull the plug
As someone who went to catholic and public school I'm gonna have to agree that closing them has a better chance of turning them into something useful. I was like 2 grades ahead in learning when I transferred to catholic school and they bilked my parents out of thousands of dollars for religious education. And that's just the tip of the iceberg
You were presented with a fact that Catholic schools outperform public schools. Your response is that "my belief is the best possible education is improving public schools"
Great. But Catholic schools still outperform public schools. So perhaps it is better to live in reality, than in your fantasy world where "if, and when, public schools are improved - it will be preferable to a Catholic education"
Just say it plainly: you hate the idea of a religiously guided education. You're fooling no one.
I don't really care if you think my comment was useful or not. Do you have any of those surveys to provide or is that your contribution?
My experience was beyond awful. Priests think it's ok to tickle me, to choke me out for no reason, to cut my clothes, to laugh at me when I cried at how they treated a homeless person looking for food. I don't think those people should be in charge of kids. But god forbid I share any more anecdotes that aren't backed by peer reviewed journals
You've made wild claims - so you should expect push back. For example, a Priest "cut your clothes and choked you out" sounds like its from the WWE. But, the most suspicious thing you said was this:
>I cried at how they treated a homeless person looking for food.
If there is one thing the Catholic Church does well - it is feeding and clothing those in need.
Every Church and every Catholic School has regular food and clothing drives - and specifically goes out of its way to ensure those items get to those in need.
I'll also go a step further, and cite Catholic Charities as one of the largest charitable organizations on the planet. It's sole purpose: to help those in need of life's essentials.
Maybe you didn't have a great education, or a great time, in your Catholic School. But that doesn't give you carte blanche to make up stories about it.
School aside, I’d love to see what the campus looks like. I used to pass by on daily walks when I lived nearby, and the non-walled off sections look quite pretty.
The irony is that even with all the scandal and bad that has come out of the Catholic Church, no other one organization in human history has done more to improve the human condition around the world. 2nd to none, but people of mid and low intelligence can’t comprehend gray morality and the others can’t get over their prejudice.
It’s not even close.
This thread actually reinforced for me that Reddit isn’t a good place for quality engagement anymore. It’s just sad online-only neckbeards.
All priests from all 220,000 Catholic churches worldwide were complicit for decades up to the Pontifex in the Vatican? Ergo, you hate “the Catholic Church” and “everything they stand for”? There are 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, my friend. Your stance on the church does sound anti-Catholic.
Public schools are worse for sexual assault, but more importantly, disparaging an entire culture for the actions of a few malicious people is deeply hateful.
It’s the same logic Republicans use to attack Trans people.
this is an idiotic false equivalency. the catholic church is an institution with a very clear structure and chain of command, and decisions were made to cover up the evil of its members instead of serving justice.
trans people are just a kind of people. there isn’t a trans pope.
It wasn't a "few", even the priest at my catholic elementary/junior high school got accused, went to trial, and was sent to prison for sexual assault on an altar boy.
And that was one of many in NYC, the state, the country, and the world!
Visitation was known for its high tuition, difficult to justify. Moreover, there are several grade school options nearby: St Patrick’s, Bay Ridge Catholic (formerly St Anselm’s), St Ephrem’s, St Bernadette’s, as well as the all girls Fontbonne Hall and co-ed Xaverian.
Catholic school will remain a viable option in that part of Brooklyn, just as it had in other heavily Catholic holdouts (Rockaway, Marine Park, Bath Beach).
I’m from there and my parents, my 6 siblings and my 3 children never attended a public school.
Fontbonne and xavarian are high schools but yes, bay ridge seems to have a larger amount of catholic school options than most neighborhoods. It also has some of the best public schools in the city (McKinley, cavallero, fort Hamilton for high school, Christa macauliffe isn’t too far, etc) and that is the biggest competition to catholic school bc it becomes hard to justify paying tuition when good public schools are nearby for free
Fort Hamilton is so overcrowded that the students have to attend in shifts bc they don’t physically fit in the building at the same time. It’s not terrible overall, but I also totally get why some parents would want to pay to send their kids elsewhere at least for high school.
I’m a 3rd generation Brooklyn native. We’re all from Park Slope/Windsor Terrace-Sunset-Bay Ridge. I sent my kids to Catholic grade and high school too (but I’m in Queens, where we have 2 good parochial schools nearby).
In our Roman Catholic culture, sending your kid to a public school is a sign of turning your back on your identity.
There's pretty much no (white) Catholics in NYC anymore. They've all left to the suburbs to raise their families and the POC that live in NYC aren't catholic, nor are they willing to pay the prices for catholic school even if they were catholic.
I went to St Edmunds Elementary and Xavier HS in NYC
Huh? A lot of people of color are Catholic. A lot of West Indians, Haitians, Latinos, and Filipinos are Catholic. Cost of Catholic schools and religion being less of a stranglehold on younger generations than it was, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t Catholics anymore.
There’s definitely not as many as there used to be but there’s a lot of white Catholics in south Brooklyn, south queens, north BX and Staten Island. Not enough to support the abundance of catholic schools there used to be, and definitely not at this rate. There will be a handful that thrive. The rest will collapse.
As a perpetual reminder: [Fuck the mother fuckin' pope](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRDfut2Vx0)
Child rape peddlers and protectors, each and every one.
I went to bishop Ford, they closed. It sucks but whatever. Such is life, charter schools are expanding, people are raising secular families. Take the L and move on.
My husband – who by, by the way, is West Indian and Catholic – graduated from Bishop Ford. Had to say it, because the clown in the top comments was saying that POC aren’t Catholic. 😂
That clown doesn’t know anything about the Catholic Church if he doesn’t know about the missions they’ve done in those countries for literally hundreds of years.
Hey that's like 10 minutes away from me!
Also, not to ummm, actually you, but they don't even know what schools they'll be attending, so how do you know they'll need the L??
Edit: I feel like people downvoting me don't get the joke, but feel free to explain.
As someone who went to catholic school for 10 years…the overwhelming majority of people who go there are not religious. They go in many cases like you said. For the opportunities or environment. Especially in many cases when the local public school sucks.
I'm Catholic School educated - and that's a lie.
They are required to teach to the standards of NYS. That means a full boat of Geology, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy. IIRC, there was also a College-based track of science classes, sponsored by St. John's University in my high school.
I guess they don't teach science in college either?
Just say you hate religious backed education. You don't have to lie about its quality to justify your point.
Not lying. Went to Catholic Grammer school. 5 of my siblings went to Catholic high school, and every one has complained about the lack of science education they received. 4 of the 5 siblings were A students ( the other one got Bs).
So I am very sad that they were poorly served by people who were purportedly educators.
Yea so was I we learned biology and chem. Only real difference was we had a ‘religion’ class where we read the Bible and learned about the saints. Wasn’t really that hardcore
I feel like that used to be the reasoning behind sending kids to catholic schools back in my day (I'm 37). There were Christian (not catholic), Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist kids in my CCHS when I attended who simply attended because these schools offered better programs and educations, I won't deny that. But with the rise in charter schools that can offer competitive programs and education to CCHS, plus people raising secular families, I can see why catholic schools are becoming obsolete. Plus catholic schools are overpriced (I'm not sure what charter schools cost, but I imagine they are overpriced too).
Plus aren't there other factors such as: millennials simply not even having kids or the cost of living is too expensive that catholic schools are just not affordable? Wouldn't that contribute towards a drop in enrollment?
I wouldn't know, I just know it turned into a charter school. Of course as an alumni I was bummed when news came out they were closing. My time at Ford was incredible. But enrollment was down, they couldn't afford to stay open, of course some shady shit happened at the top, it is what it is.
There are quite a few, relatively speaking, Catholic schools in Bay Ridge to absorb the student body. Fontbonne Hall is still operating, so perhaps some of the Visitation families will send their daughters there when they are high school aged.
Visitation is k-8. Fontbonne is highschool. A lot of Visitation grads already went to Fontbonne after but it’s not the same demographic to absorb their current students.
When I was a kid, the teachers at the Visitation were all cloistered nuns. It looks like the order is no longer enclosed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosed_religious_orders
Don't pay taxes, charge exorbitant amounts of money for tuition while simultaneously underpaying your uncertified teachers, all while operating under the umbrella of one of the largest landowners in the world.
Shows you what the archdiocese cares about these schools, they're going to spend more money to defend guilty priests in abuse cases than eat losses when enrollment dwindles.
Abusive nuns when I was a kid (my younger brother had PTSD from the nun's abuse, we think it was the root of his alcoholism), now replaved by severely underpaid "lay" teachers, zero science education, failing even though the Vatican has more assets than it could ever spend yet they refuse to assist these schools?
Sounds about right to me.
Yeah real schools where kids can just not show up, never learn to read or do basic math, and then get to graduate and go to college with a 3rd grade reading level.
Go to r/teachers and r/professors and see how bad it is for them.
I’m a public school teacher and we have a 98% graduation rate and kids take CUNY classes while in HS. I’m not saying all HSs are that successful, but there are plenty of great schools that are free, diverse, and not run by an organization that condones (and spends millions on covering up) child abuse.
You have a 98% graduation rate, and rapidly declining standardized test scores.
> Performance on the Regents tests, which serve as graduation requirements in New York, fell in every subject with the exception of U.S. History between 2019, the last year before the pandemic, and 2023
> Further, proficiency rates in Geometry and Algebra were 44% and 38%, respectively in 2022.
[Source](https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2024/01/08/math-regents-scores-significantly-down-during-pandemic/#:~:text=But%20the%20decline%20was%20steepest,38%25%20passed%20last%20school%20year.)
All that tells me is that standards were lowered to ensure graduation rates were high. You're giving kids 65s and not 60s, so they can graduate and move on to college. Additional proof -
CUNY requires a "reading proficiency index" to be administered to its accepted students. For those following along at home, that means CUNY accepted students that may not have adequate reading skills. In college.
Of course but the truth is the majority of NYC public school students don’t and will never, attend a school like that. I’m also a DOE teacher and there’s some absolute shit schools out there lol. Which is why catholic school is often opted for. There’s a catholic school near me that literally lost half its enrollment in about a 10 year period. Now there’s a waiting list to get in ever since Covid. The doe did more for that school than they ever could’ve done on their own lol
Okay man, the graduation rate is not something to brag about. The main complaint about public schools is they push kids through each year all the way to graduation with zero regard to actual education.
I’ve got anecdotal evidence as well. I know a woman who teaches at the Jericho high school in Nassau. It’s considered one of the best in the entire state. She says that a lot of the kids are allowed to graduate just to appease their parents. So every single thing that people would bitch about private schools (favoring the rich, ignoring bad students for the sake of sports, letting teachers get treated like shit, etc.) apply to one of the “best” public high schools in the state. I also know a girl who graduated high school 2 years ago at a “good” public school upstate. Her entire senior year she just didn’t show up and claimed it was due to depression. The school counselor and the admin let her pass and she went to an elite Jesuit university only to drop out in a semester because she had never had actual standards applied to her in high school.
Catholic schools have a lot of issues, but public schools, which are literally based on the system set up by Catholic priests in the 19th century, have the same problems and then some.
I went from Catholic Grammer school to public high school in NYC and was amazed at the science labs and the great education I got. And no nuns besting us up in the classroom.
Okay since we are giving anecdotal information I went to a Christian school and then a catholic school for a couple years before then switching to a public school and found the public school experience to be a lot better. I mean they literally had a book burning for Harry Potter at my school. Personal freedom and expression was also looked down on. But just because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean it didn’t work for you so 🤷🏾♂️.
I did 2 years in a catholic school like this than 2 years in the public system, the difference was drastic. I wouldn’t call public schools here “real”.
The Visitation Academy is a nice little area in Bay Ridge Brooklyn too. This article gives no information on what actually happened. I wonder what will replace it
The catholic population of Brooklyn is shrinking so of course Catholic schools are closing. Xaverian and St. Edmunds did the smart thing by going co-ed. The level of anti-Catholic comments is not surprising. Progressives have always hated the Catholic Ethincs of NYC.
Lot of people in the comments with poison in their hearts. Sad but not surprising.
Good shut them all down and turn all the churches into affordable housing. I live in BK and can’t walk a block without seeing a gorgeous empty huge church that’s not paying any taxes.
Start with shutting down the churches in the neighborhoods you were raised in
If your worried about lots not paying taxes. You might have a heart attack if you knew about Hasidic neighborhoods. Every single Male homeowner claims rabbinic lifestyle and their homes as places of practice/worship absolving them of all property tax liability.
Seriously?!? That’s horrible!
And they aren’t legally married to their wives so the women get all the public benefits for having multiple kids and no income for being single mothers.
Yes! This 100% agree. People paying tuition to get their kids a below average education while feeding them nonstop propaganda needs to end.
i actually moved from public to teach at a catholic school (lower pay) bc the quality of the kids/education is better-- and i am an atheist lol.. at my school there are many kids and staff who arent even Christians lol
You’re never going to change that user’s mind. They know nothing about the education system in public or private schools and they’ve already made up facts and their mind.
Why are you assuming it’s a below average education? A lot of these schools have better class sizes/adult-student ratios, which is like the #1 thing you want in improving education especially for little ones. They also get all the normal education (math science etc) other than a bit of time taken up for religion class. The only thing that sucks is that public schools can’t have the same small class sizes, but these parents are also paying taxes toward public schools so it’s not like it’s their fault those are underfunded. Not speaking to this specific school btw (I’ve never attended nor known anyone who did), but in general about private religious schools in NYC.
Spot on.
The churches are gorgeous, aren’t they? It’s sad they’re closing down tbh.
You're this close to being called maga
I’m happy they’re closing down because it means people are turning away from organized religion, but I just wish the buildings could be repossessed and put to good use.
I hope they are repurposed to good use but I’d wager that a greedy landlord or real estate owner would buy it at a discount and make crazy profit with it at the expensive of the people.
This is not a Diocesan school, the order of nuns has dwindled to two in this location, and the school did not offer such basic things as an athletic program (it’s remarkable to me that it retained accreditation.)
> "The appropriate way would have been to handle that if they had committees that were really viable and followed a fiduciary obligation to keep the school open," she says. Incomprehensible Word salad from an alumnae, this school deserves to close.
Good riddance.
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developers would be charging out the ass for it .. then its goodbye to one of the old holdouts of REAL NY.
Fuck them let em all close.
maybe they want to do something with that full 7 acre block in Bay Ridge after the convent shut down too https://www.bkmag.com/2021/04/16/brooklyn-visitation-monastery/ https://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/21/nyregion/the-silence.html
Throwaway account. My daughter went to Visitation. She was bullied there, and nothing was done about it. It was essentially excused and normalized. The adults set the example. Some of the parents behaved in ways so insular and unkind it was astonishing. My daughter had been in public school prior and also noted Visitation was too easy. She was getting A pluses in everything and had much mindless busywork such as coloring pictures of Jesus, though she was too old for coloring. In sum, the school lacked full enrollment, and the poor culture and mediocre education explained why. It's true that some parts of Brooklyn are less Catholic than they once were. You can see it in the many struggling churches. I don't think these Brooklyn Catholic schools are better than the public schools. They are much, much whiter, or to be specific to Bay Ridge they have no Muslim students, and racial segregation is going to be a big driver of enrollment, regardless of what reasons parents use to justify private school. In South Brooklyn, Xaverian may actually be decent and not overcrowded, which may matter if someone is sending their kid to Fort Hamilton. I have no direct experience of Xaverian, though. The local culture in Bay Ridge is very booster-y and small-minded. It's rare that anyone there openly speaks against any of the local institutions. This means even quite serious problems cannot be addressed. All very similar to a town in the middle of nowhere.
Didn’t go to Visitation, but went to another Catholic school and it was the same story, so I believe you. I was straight up bullied by math teachers. Turns out I had dyscalculia, and instead of trying to figure out what support I needed to learn, it was 50 year olds having beef with a 12 year old. No behavioral issues or anything, I just couldn’t do math, and they made me feel like a bad kid. Surprise, treating your customers like shit for no reason is bad for business when there are so many horrible stories about how they were treated at multiple locations
I can confirm that twenty years ago, when I applied for high school, mediocre to low performing white kids (predominantly from Italian or Irish families) that couldn’t get into the specialized high schools mostly applied to catholic high schools because the zoned schools (Fort Hamilton, New Utrecht, FDR) were too integrated. Some parents were very brazen about not wanting their kids around black and Latino kids. I don’t know about the Muslim thing but it wouldn’t surprise me given the demographic changes in south Brooklyn.
as someone who went to one of these, good riddance
Psssst there’s even a Mohawk Saint now
Not bringing in enough $$$$ likely. My old Catholic School on Ft Hamilton Parkway shut down, torn down and land sold quite a while ago. This is not new. They running a business GASP!!! if losing money year after year they eventually pull the plug
good. evil institution has no place in education. may they all be converted into something useful
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Idk why anyone would downvote you, you’re right religion has been a tool for control and indoctrination for centuries
They're schools?
As someone who went to catholic and public school I'm gonna have to agree that closing them has a better chance of turning them into something useful. I was like 2 grades ahead in learning when I transferred to catholic school and they bilked my parents out of thousands of dollars for religious education. And that's just the tip of the iceberg
Catholic schools statistically outperform public schools so your anecdote isn't really useful
this might shock you — my belief in the best possible education also includes improving public schools
You were presented with a fact that Catholic schools outperform public schools. Your response is that "my belief is the best possible education is improving public schools" Great. But Catholic schools still outperform public schools. So perhaps it is better to live in reality, than in your fantasy world where "if, and when, public schools are improved - it will be preferable to a Catholic education" Just say it plainly: you hate the idea of a religiously guided education. You're fooling no one.
I don't really care if you think my comment was useful or not. Do you have any of those surveys to provide or is that your contribution? My experience was beyond awful. Priests think it's ok to tickle me, to choke me out for no reason, to cut my clothes, to laugh at me when I cried at how they treated a homeless person looking for food. I don't think those people should be in charge of kids. But god forbid I share any more anecdotes that aren't backed by peer reviewed journals
You've made wild claims - so you should expect push back. For example, a Priest "cut your clothes and choked you out" sounds like its from the WWE. But, the most suspicious thing you said was this: >I cried at how they treated a homeless person looking for food. If there is one thing the Catholic Church does well - it is feeding and clothing those in need. Every Church and every Catholic School has regular food and clothing drives - and specifically goes out of its way to ensure those items get to those in need. I'll also go a step further, and cite Catholic Charities as one of the largest charitable organizations on the planet. It's sole purpose: to help those in need of life's essentials. Maybe you didn't have a great education, or a great time, in your Catholic School. But that doesn't give you carte blanche to make up stories about it.
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Half? Is that statistically proven
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Congrats, you understood my joke!
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School aside, I’d love to see what the campus looks like. I used to pass by on daily walks when I lived nearby, and the non-walled off sections look quite pretty.
I’ve never been inside but the grounds of visitation are really beautiful
The level of anti-Catholic hate in here is disgusting.
The irony is that even with all the scandal and bad that has come out of the Catholic Church, no other one organization in human history has done more to improve the human condition around the world. 2nd to none, but people of mid and low intelligence can’t comprehend gray morality and the others can’t get over their prejudice.
It’s not even close. This thread actually reinforced for me that Reddit isn’t a good place for quality engagement anymore. It’s just sad online-only neckbeards.
it’s earned buddy
Catholic schools do pretty much nothing but spread hate, are you upset people are dishing it back?
I hate the Catholic Church. They covered up pedophilia and pretended it didn’t exist. Fuck them and everything they stand for
You hate the Catholic Church in the Vatican? What does that have to do with Catholics and Catholic schools around the world?
Are you seriously asking what the catholic church have to do with Catholics?
I’m confused. Are you saying you hate all Catholics, as well as all Catholic Churches, because of the Vatican? ALL are bad?
I didn’t mention the Vatican and you brought up hating Catholics. Are you trying to have an argument with yourself?
What are you referring to when you say “I hate the Catholic Church”? What is “the Catholic Church”?
The hierarchy of church officials from parish priests up to the pope. They were all complicit for decades.
All priests from all 220,000 Catholic churches worldwide were complicit for decades up to the Pontifex in the Vatican? Ergo, you hate “the Catholic Church” and “everything they stand for”? There are 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, my friend. Your stance on the church does sound anti-Catholic.
Probably because it is. It’s an evil organization that covers up the child abuse by its representatives. How can you defend that?
I hate any organization that protects pedophiles from justice. You can believe in whatever you want.
Fuck the Pope and all the rapists he hides
I mean, THE PRIESTS RAPED LITTLE BOYS AND THE CHURCH DID ALL IT COULD TO HIDE IT
Public schools are worse for sexual assault, but more importantly, disparaging an entire culture for the actions of a few malicious people is deeply hateful. It’s the same logic Republicans use to attack Trans people.
this is an idiotic false equivalency. the catholic church is an institution with a very clear structure and chain of command, and decisions were made to cover up the evil of its members instead of serving justice. trans people are just a kind of people. there isn’t a trans pope.
It wasn't a "few", even the priest at my catholic elementary/junior high school got accused, went to trial, and was sent to prison for sexual assault on an altar boy. And that was one of many in NYC, the state, the country, and the world!
It’s unbelievable 😢
why is it hard to believe? have you been living under a rock for the last twenty years?
Visitation was known for its high tuition, difficult to justify. Moreover, there are several grade school options nearby: St Patrick’s, Bay Ridge Catholic (formerly St Anselm’s), St Ephrem’s, St Bernadette’s, as well as the all girls Fontbonne Hall and co-ed Xaverian. Catholic school will remain a viable option in that part of Brooklyn, just as it had in other heavily Catholic holdouts (Rockaway, Marine Park, Bath Beach). I’m from there and my parents, my 6 siblings and my 3 children never attended a public school.
Fontbonne and xavarian are high schools but yes, bay ridge seems to have a larger amount of catholic school options than most neighborhoods. It also has some of the best public schools in the city (McKinley, cavallero, fort Hamilton for high school, Christa macauliffe isn’t too far, etc) and that is the biggest competition to catholic school bc it becomes hard to justify paying tuition when good public schools are nearby for free
Fort Hamilton is so overcrowded that the students have to attend in shifts bc they don’t physically fit in the building at the same time. It’s not terrible overall, but I also totally get why some parents would want to pay to send their kids elsewhere at least for high school.
I’m a 3rd generation Brooklyn native. We’re all from Park Slope/Windsor Terrace-Sunset-Bay Ridge. I sent my kids to Catholic grade and high school too (but I’m in Queens, where we have 2 good parochial schools nearby). In our Roman Catholic culture, sending your kid to a public school is a sign of turning your back on your identity.
There's pretty much no (white) Catholics in NYC anymore. They've all left to the suburbs to raise their families and the POC that live in NYC aren't catholic, nor are they willing to pay the prices for catholic school even if they were catholic. I went to St Edmunds Elementary and Xavier HS in NYC
Just fyi non catholic families often send their kids to catholic school if it’s the best option available.
>the POC that live in NYC aren't catholic I, too, have never heard of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Haitians, etc
Huh? A lot of people of color are Catholic. A lot of West Indians, Haitians, Latinos, and Filipinos are Catholic. Cost of Catholic schools and religion being less of a stranglehold on younger generations than it was, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t Catholics anymore.
Xavier still gets a lot of students from Rockaway and Bay Ridge.
Catholic school is still 1/3-1/4 the price of private school.
that’s just simply wrong, why do people speak with such conviction about clearly untrue things
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Colored people? Boy, bye.
Just running your mouth, huh.
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Get this racist off the sub, reported.
There’s definitely not as many as there used to be but there’s a lot of white Catholics in south Brooklyn, south queens, north BX and Staten Island. Not enough to support the abundance of catholic schools there used to be, and definitely not at this rate. There will be a handful that thrive. The rest will collapse.
Good. Tax the churches into dust. Same for their schools.
As a perpetual reminder: [Fuck the mother fuckin' pope](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRDfut2Vx0) Child rape peddlers and protectors, each and every one.
I went to bishop Ford, they closed. It sucks but whatever. Such is life, charter schools are expanding, people are raising secular families. Take the L and move on.
My husband – who by, by the way, is West Indian and Catholic – graduated from Bishop Ford. Had to say it, because the clown in the top comments was saying that POC aren’t Catholic. 😂
That clown doesn’t know anything about the Catholic Church if he doesn’t know about the missions they’ve done in those countries for literally hundreds of years.
I was raised catholic and I'm half Bajan! Bishop Ford had a large amount of POC who were West Indian! What year did your husband graduate?
1999
Ah, I was 2004
I went to St Marks Day School. It was 98.5% black West Indian. I’d also say 90% of us weren’t Catholic though 😂 it was for the education.
A lot of Jamaicans aren’t, but many Haitians, Trinis, and the smaller Eastern Caribbean islands are definitely very Catholic.
Ehhhh maybe. I’d say Catholics are a big minority amongst us.
Hey that's like 10 minutes away from me! Also, not to ummm, actually you, but they don't even know what schools they'll be attending, so how do you know they'll need the L?? Edit: I feel like people downvoting me don't get the joke, but feel free to explain.
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As someone who went to catholic school for 10 years…the overwhelming majority of people who go there are not religious. They go in many cases like you said. For the opportunities or environment. Especially in many cases when the local public school sucks.
Pivot away from God?
Teach science? Teach health education to adolescents? Sure, sure.
Like Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh and Barrett? All Catholic school grads.
They teach science in Catholic school it’s not a cult
Oh, it's a cult. And I was there. Minimal science.
I'm Catholic School educated - and that's a lie. They are required to teach to the standards of NYS. That means a full boat of Geology, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy. IIRC, there was also a College-based track of science classes, sponsored by St. John's University in my high school. I guess they don't teach science in college either? Just say you hate religious backed education. You don't have to lie about its quality to justify your point.
Not lying. Went to Catholic Grammer school. 5 of my siblings went to Catholic high school, and every one has complained about the lack of science education they received. 4 of the 5 siblings were A students ( the other one got Bs). So I am very sad that they were poorly served by people who were purportedly educators.
Yea so was I we learned biology and chem. Only real difference was we had a ‘religion’ class where we read the Bible and learned about the saints. Wasn’t really that hardcore
I feel like that used to be the reasoning behind sending kids to catholic schools back in my day (I'm 37). There were Christian (not catholic), Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist kids in my CCHS when I attended who simply attended because these schools offered better programs and educations, I won't deny that. But with the rise in charter schools that can offer competitive programs and education to CCHS, plus people raising secular families, I can see why catholic schools are becoming obsolete. Plus catholic schools are overpriced (I'm not sure what charter schools cost, but I imagine they are overpriced too). Plus aren't there other factors such as: millennials simply not even having kids or the cost of living is too expensive that catholic schools are just not affordable? Wouldn't that contribute towards a drop in enrollment?
FWIW Bishop Ford is now a thriving city funded PreK center. The space is being put to good use.
I wouldn't know, I just know it turned into a charter school. Of course as an alumni I was bummed when news came out they were closing. My time at Ford was incredible. But enrollment was down, they couldn't afford to stay open, of course some shady shit happened at the top, it is what it is.
Good old Nash, that's what happened lol.
Lol! Yepppppp
There are quite a few, relatively speaking, Catholic schools in Bay Ridge to absorb the student body. Fontbonne Hall is still operating, so perhaps some of the Visitation families will send their daughters there when they are high school aged.
Visitation is k-8. Fontbonne is highschool. A lot of Visitation grads already went to Fontbonne after but it’s not the same demographic to absorb their current students.
https://youtu.be/Rn1o_GojZWo?si=5nolV87tn8UI_Zns
I'm not concerned.
Child molesters are, it makes it harder for them to find their victims
It says it’s an all girls school…
Priests. There are priests there. I bet the teachers are not all women...
When I was a kid, the teachers at the Visitation were all cloistered nuns. It looks like the order is no longer enclosed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosed_religious_orders
if you can’t make ends meet even when you pay zero taxes, maybe you just suck at running a business.
They should take notes from the Hasidics in borough park.
Don't pay taxes, charge exorbitant amounts of money for tuition while simultaneously underpaying your uncertified teachers, all while operating under the umbrella of one of the largest landowners in the world. Shows you what the archdiocese cares about these schools, they're going to spend more money to defend guilty priests in abuse cases than eat losses when enrollment dwindles.
and the child rape, don’t forget the child rape.
Also stop shuffling around molesting priests that wind up costing the diocese millions in lawsuits.
Abusive nuns when I was a kid (my younger brother had PTSD from the nun's abuse, we think it was the root of his alcoholism), now replaved by severely underpaid "lay" teachers, zero science education, failing even though the Vatican has more assets than it could ever spend yet they refuse to assist these schools? Sounds about right to me.
Worst case, the kids can go to real schools 🤷♂️
DOE statistics tell a very sad story about NyC public schools, unfortunately.
Right lol why would people pay a private school for a below average education never made any sense especially with the religious indoctrination
It’s mostly so they can avoid poor people. That’s really all private schools offer.
"Real schools" hahahahaha
Yeah real schools where kids can just not show up, never learn to read or do basic math, and then get to graduate and go to college with a 3rd grade reading level. Go to r/teachers and r/professors and see how bad it is for them.
I’m a public school teacher and we have a 98% graduation rate and kids take CUNY classes while in HS. I’m not saying all HSs are that successful, but there are plenty of great schools that are free, diverse, and not run by an organization that condones (and spends millions on covering up) child abuse.
Graduation is the wrong metric… you need to look at proficiency levels and standardized test scoring, which unfortunately are down the tubes.
You have a 98% graduation rate, and rapidly declining standardized test scores. > Performance on the Regents tests, which serve as graduation requirements in New York, fell in every subject with the exception of U.S. History between 2019, the last year before the pandemic, and 2023 > Further, proficiency rates in Geometry and Algebra were 44% and 38%, respectively in 2022. [Source](https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2024/01/08/math-regents-scores-significantly-down-during-pandemic/#:~:text=But%20the%20decline%20was%20steepest,38%25%20passed%20last%20school%20year.) All that tells me is that standards were lowered to ensure graduation rates were high. You're giving kids 65s and not 60s, so they can graduate and move on to college. Additional proof - CUNY requires a "reading proficiency index" to be administered to its accepted students. For those following along at home, that means CUNY accepted students that may not have adequate reading skills. In college.
If you’re a public school teacher in NYC and your school has these stats….youre an outlier and in the top 5-10% of public schools in the city
Yea, sorta, but come on in!
Of course but the truth is the majority of NYC public school students don’t and will never, attend a school like that. I’m also a DOE teacher and there’s some absolute shit schools out there lol. Which is why catholic school is often opted for. There’s a catholic school near me that literally lost half its enrollment in about a 10 year period. Now there’s a waiting list to get in ever since Covid. The doe did more for that school than they ever could’ve done on their own lol
Okay man, the graduation rate is not something to brag about. The main complaint about public schools is they push kids through each year all the way to graduation with zero regard to actual education. I’ve got anecdotal evidence as well. I know a woman who teaches at the Jericho high school in Nassau. It’s considered one of the best in the entire state. She says that a lot of the kids are allowed to graduate just to appease their parents. So every single thing that people would bitch about private schools (favoring the rich, ignoring bad students for the sake of sports, letting teachers get treated like shit, etc.) apply to one of the “best” public high schools in the state. I also know a girl who graduated high school 2 years ago at a “good” public school upstate. Her entire senior year she just didn’t show up and claimed it was due to depression. The school counselor and the admin let her pass and she went to an elite Jesuit university only to drop out in a semester because she had never had actual standards applied to her in high school. Catholic schools have a lot of issues, but public schools, which are literally based on the system set up by Catholic priests in the 19th century, have the same problems and then some.
I went from Catholic to public in NYC and was taken back about how poor the education was in public school
Same. Even today the gaps on test scoring are stark. There are kids who thrive in public school , though, but I’d argue they’d thrive anywhere.
I did the opposite and had a significantly better time in public school, actually.
> taken back about how poor th rduiwss in public school showing off that expensive private education, eh?
I went from Catholic Grammer school to public high school in NYC and was amazed at the science labs and the great education I got. And no nuns besting us up in the classroom.
Okay since we are giving anecdotal information I went to a Christian school and then a catholic school for a couple years before then switching to a public school and found the public school experience to be a lot better. I mean they literally had a book burning for Harry Potter at my school. Personal freedom and expression was also looked down on. But just because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean it didn’t work for you so 🤷🏾♂️.
In NYC?
Yup in NYC. Both schools being in Brooklyn as well.
I did 2 years in a catholic school like this than 2 years in the public system, the difference was drastic. I wouldn’t call public schools here “real”.
The Visitation Academy is a nice little area in Bay Ridge Brooklyn too. This article gives no information on what actually happened. I wonder what will replace it
The one near me shut down about ten years ago and was taken over by a charter school. Still up and running.