St. Dom's to take junior high school students

AUBURN — Trinity Catholic School junior high campus will close next fall, and seventh- and eighth-graders will attend St. Dom's high school, Bishop Richard Malone announced Monday night to a gym packed with teachers and parents.

Meanwhile the format of the remaining two campuses will change. They'll become one school with one name at two campuses, he said.

"I take great joy in announcing 'St. Dominic Academy,' that's why you see balloons around here," Malone said of the black, white and blue balloons that decorated the gym. "Sometimes when a bishop calls a meeting with parents and teachers there wouldn't be any balloons. The announcement would be grim, an announcement happening in many parts of the country that schools are closing," he said.

Instead, "we're making a change in the configuration" of St. Dominic Regional High School and Trinity Catholic elementary "and bringing them together."

The St. Dominic Academy will have two campuses: the current St. Dom's high school on Auburn's Gracelawn Road, which will house grades seven and eight, and nine through 12; and the current Trinity school next to Holy Cross Church on Lewiston's Lisbon Street.

The existing junior high campus on Main Street in Lewiston will close.

Driving the consolidation is a shrinking birthrate, a tough economy and fewer people going to church which means fewer dollars being collected on Sunday. There are 276 students at the high school, a school built for 400, and 420 students at Trinity.

"If we do nothing we are threatening the future of Catholic education in this area. in two or three years I'd have to call another meeting, a grim and sad one," Malone said. "I just don't want to do that."

  Releasing results from a recent Meitler Study, Malone shared statistics:

• The pool of potential Catholic school students in Lewiston-Auburn is declining, making it difficult to stabilize or increase enrollment in the foreseeable future.

• Financial projections at each school based on enrollment show yearly deficits.

• Money collected in church each Sunday, which helps pay for Catholic schools, is down. Offertory collections in Lewiston went down 9 percent, and up 1 percent in Auburn between 2006-2008. "So those parishes are finding it more difficult to support the schools. They're not able to increase school support to address projected deficits," Malone said.

Malone released results of a survey that asked Catholic families in Lewiston-Auburn, Augusta and Brunswick their intentions of sending children ages 0-4 to Catholic schools.

• 46 percent said they would enroll their children in a Catholic school; and 44 percent would enroll their children at a public school.

• When Catholic parents of children ages 5-12 were asked about high school, 30 percent said St. Dom's would be their first choice, 56 percent would opt for public.

Reasons why parents did not plan to enroll their children in a Catholic school included costs and transportation.

St. Dom's high school annual tuition for Catholic students is $7,700, and $2,300 for Trinity's elementary Catholic students. Next year's seventh- and eighth-graders will pay the same price they would have paid at Trinity, Malone said, but he said he did not know what would happen to junior high tuition beyond that.

The benefits of the merger is there'll be one administration, one school board, a more efficient use of facilities resulting in savings and improved learning opportunities for seventh and eighth graders, including state of the art classrooms and athletic facilities, he said.

Donald Fourier will be principal of the new St. Dominic Academy, with help from two assistant principals. Fourier said he was excited to welcome seventh- and eighth-graders this fall. "There's plenty of room," he said. He likes the new name "because it's still St. Dom's, but the word academy gives it a fuller" mission.

Two Trinity parents said they were happy with news the bishop delivered.

"I came in with a heavy heart. I was afraid he was going to tell us it was going away," said Amy Poulin of Lisbon Falls. "So I feel very relieved that they want to plant firmer roots."

Amy McLean of Lewiston agreed. Both said they like the idea of seventh- and eighth-graders going to the high school campus. "I'm excited about it," McLean said. "It has a state of the art gym and facilities. It's a beautiful school. They're going to have good opportunities."

It is too early to know if there will be any layoffs. That will depend on fall enrollment, said Catholic school superintendent Sister Rosemary Donohue.

bwashuk@sunjournal.com