As a beloved prep school struggles, some see hope

Bishop Eustace Prep is celebrating its 65th anniversary this year, but the last 12 months have been stressful for the fiercely loyal students, parents, alumni, and supporters of the private Catholic high school in Pennsauken. Veteran teachers and administrators have left, buyouts are being offered, deficit spending continues, and enrollment has declined from 646 during the 2014-15 academic year to 537 currently.

Amid concerns about the beloved institution’s future, a meeting Monday sparked fresh fears as well as some optimism that the five-member board of trustees many view as remote and unresponsive may show signs of willingness to collaborate with the school community on efforts to attract students and raise money.

"We want more of an open dialogue and communication between the school and the parents,” said businessman Paul Canal, a 1982 Eustace grad, father of two current students, and organizer of the May 6 session of the Bishop Eustace Parents Association.

“I called the meeting to be constructive, not destructive,” said Canal, 55, of Cherry Hill. “Changes are being made. I support some of the changes. And Eustace is not closing.”

Canal and others who were present told me a crowd of perhaps 150 people gathered in the campus cafeteria for well over an hour and asked questions of Leonard Fitts, a respected educator who was named interim head of school in January after the abrupt departure of the longtime top administrator.

In April, the board of trustees — five priests of the Pallottine order, which opened the school in 1954 — sent notice of a “voluntary separation” offer open to most full-time administrators, faculty, and staff. A leaner Eustace and "a sustainable business model” is the goal, because the school has been “operating at a deficit for many years” while enrollment fell and staffing remained steady, according to the letter.

The school, which costs more than $17,000 annually to attend, enrolls about 500 students. Eustace is facing new competition for students: Holy Cross Preparatory Academy opened last year in nearby Delran and is now home to several former Eustace faculty members and administrators whose departure rocked the school last spring.

“What people really want to know,” Canal said, "is what’s going on.”

John Maroccia, a member of the Eustace Class of ’68 and a retired lawyer in Camden County who was at the meeting, said: “Secrecy is the majority of the problem. The board has hired an outside proctor, if you will, to run the school, but in the last six months there’s been no attempt to increase enrollment, except for some public relations stuff. The incoming freshman class has only 92 students.”

I reached out to Fitts, as well as Kathleen Nagle, a Philadelphia attorney who represents the board. Fitts’ office referred me to another administrator who said a public relations professional would get back to me, and Nagle had me submit email questions for the Rev. Peter Sticco, the board chairman, and on Friday, Sticco emailed me to say there is “no plan to close the school.”

He offered the same reassurance in a letter he sent Friday to the Eustace community, in which he said the board acknowledges the deep love alumni and others have for the institution and is willing to discuss suggestions about formation of an advisory board that would include lay people.

Some alumni said the board of trustees itself must be restructured. Composed of five Pallottine priests and with members with wealth or connections, the board is inherently unable to do fund-raising on the level an institution like Eustace desperately needs, said John Zarych, a Galloway Township lawyer who graduated from the school in 1966.

“St. Joe Prep in Philadelphia is the gold standard,” said Zarych, who has deeply researched the issue. “Eustace should be governed by a 25-member board proposal, one third of whom would be Pallottines and two-thirds would be prominent alumni or parents.”

With a tradition of both academic rigor and athletic prowess, as well as a handsome campus between Route 70 and Cooper River Park, Eustace is something of a South Jersey version of Philly’s storied St. Joseph Preparatory School. Long favored by Italian American families (the Pallottines take their name from St. Vincent Pallotti), the school honors the memory of Bartholomew J. Eustace, the first bishop of the Diocese of Camden.

Loyalty among many of the prep school’s 8,000 alums — it’s not uncommon for families to have generations of graduates — is undeniable. Eustace alums have had successful careers in a variety of fields and are prominent in South Jersey and beyond. The school’s future matters not only to individual stakeholders but to the region as well.

“Eustace is more than a high school. It’s a family,” said Chris Masso, a member of the Class of 1988.

“We want to put a board of trustees together like any good private school would have, and we’ve pretty much been turned away," said Masso, 49, a financial consultant who lives in Medford. "It’s frustrating.”

Frank Troy, a Class of 1991 graduate who is an at-large member of the Eustace alumni association board, said parents “immediately want to see a targeted recruitment and fund-raising campaign with goals for [increasing] enrollment."

An energy executive who lives in Haddonfield, Troy, 46, also said the board ought to realize that “there are thousands of alumni who have done well and are willing to donate time, talent, and treasure."

Organizers of the school’s yearlong 65th anniversary celebration said it will kick off at 12:45 p.m. Thursday on campus to “honor the achievements of the first 65 years.”

I hope Bishop Eustace will celebrate many anniversaries to come.