COMMENTA RY
Charity Vogel: Dream dies, taking toll on children
The children don’t know it yet, but the dream has died. LeRon is rolling out dough at a small table. Christian is washing a plastic dinosaur in a tub of sudsy water. Jilan is chattering emphatically about something she’s learned—maybe about the pumpkin plant sprouting on a shelf, or the eggs hatching in a nearby incubator.
“She’s very articulate,” says Sister Diane Bernbeck, with an amused shrug. “She’ll give you a piece of her mind.”
LeRon, Christian and Jilan are 3 years old. They are busy with dough and dinosaurs on a sunny spring morning inside SS. Columba-Brigid Montessori School on Hickory Street.
They don’t realize what they are about to lose.
At the end of this school year, in June, the Montessori school on the East Side will close its doors for the final time.
Gone will be the bright promise with which the school started. Gone will be the clusters of small children, exclaiming over discoveries and making new friends. Some 65 of them will be forced to look for new places to learn next fall.
The situation is a sad one for anyone who cares about children in Buffalo— especially those who don’t happen to be affluent or well-connected.
And it has left some families feeling abandoned.
“I was crying. I love this school,” said Dawn Bonner of Shirley Street, whose son attends the school. “My son comes home with a different word practically every day. He sings a song about the seven continents —what 3-year-old do you know that knows the seven continents?”
It’s a heartbreaking end for a school that began with glowing promise. When Bishop Henry Mansell opened the site, in 1999, he pledged to expand the diocese’s outreach on the East Side. Just 16 children were enrolled. Since then, enrollment has climbed steadily and now is at capacity, with a waiting list.
“We’re thriving,” said Sister Bernbeck, principal and a member of the Sisters of St. Francis. “It makes it very hard for me to understand.”
Diocesan leaders have said SS. Columba- Brigid costs too much to run. This year, the school got a $130,000 diocesan subsidy. The diocese also cites numbers showing the school’s children aren’t quite as poor as kids at a few other urban Catholic schools. Plans are in the works, officials said, to shift students from the Montessori into other diocesan schools and to integrate Montessori elements into other schools.
“Finding a new community for children and families at SS. Columba-Brigid has been a priority,” said Dr. Rosemary Henry, diocesan school superintendent.
The diocese’s explanations are deeply disappointing.
Poverty on the East Side hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s worse now than 10 years ago. Fully 43 percent of kids in the city are growing up poor, census figures show. And, during the past decade, options for Catholic education on the East Side have steadily evaporated: St. Stanislaus closed its school a few years ago, and the school at St. Ann’s also closed.
SS. Columba-Brigid, which has garnered generous gifts from M&T Bank, the Community Foundation and other supporters, costs about $400,000 a year to operate.
That’s not small change, especially in tough times. But the diocese has chosen to close the Montessori while maintaining expansive facilities in the suburbs, as well as a mansion for the bishop on one of the city’s toniest streets.
The decision about where to put church money is, in the end, up to diocesan officials.
LeRon, Christian and Jilan don’t get a say.
That’s too bad for their future. And for ours.
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