Efforts to save Cardinal Dougherty continue

For SEPTA bus driver Joe Halbherr, who pays to send two sons to Cardinal Dougherty High, the decision to close the school felt like a sucker punch of betrayal.

"It stinks," said Halbherr, a 1976 graduate who joined alumni and students for a protest rally outside the school's locked gates yesterday. "More and more the church hierarchy is following the money, not serving the people."

Joseph P. McFadden, head of Catholic education for the archdiocese, said he knows how Halbherr feels.

In 1975, before he entered the seminary, McFadden said, he was one of a crowd of alumni who protested, unsuccessfully, the church's decision to close St. Thomas More High in West Philadelphia.

"I added my voice. I signed the petitions," said McFadden, now an auxiliary bishop. "It's not like I don't understand the sadness of losing your school."

But McFadden said that didn't mean he would change his mind. He said the church must close Cardinal Dougherty and Northeast Catholic High School for Boys, once-crowded schools that fell victim to changing neighborhoods and declining enrollment.

"We're between a rock and a hard place," McFadden said in an interview. "We want to do all we can to maintain opportunities for a Catholic education, but we can't do the impossible."

Several hundred Cardinal Dougherty alumni and students, refusing to concede defeat, stood in a cold drizzle yesterday chanting slogans and vowing to keep fighting.

Organizers are planning a march to the archdiocesan offices tomorrow morning. "We're going to give 'em hell," said Steve Schmidt, an organizer.

"We've had kids accepted to every Ivy League school in the country," he said. "The school is still doing what it's supposed to do."

For many in the crowd, the idea that the place will not last forever is still unthinkable.

They spoke of the school's traditions, its teachers, its glory days in the 1960s as the largest Catholic high school in the world.

Once the school was stuffed with nearly 6,000 kids, mostly the sons and daughters of the German, Italian, and Irish blue-collar families who lived nearby. But the classrooms began emptying as those families left Northeast rowhouses for the suburbs. Now the massive building, at 6301 N. Second St., has just 600 students.

Ed Boyd, who grew up in Olney and graduated from the school in 1986, said his kids attend Catholic schools near his home in Abington.

"Most of us have moved out to the suburbs, and those who came in our place don't support it the same way," he said.

Supporters said those numbers didn't tell everything. They described the school as a model of diversity and a refuge of quality education in an area that badly needs one. They bragged about the school's sports teams and cooperative work programs.

While growing up in Fern Rock, Andrew Johnson said, he worked at the school in the summers to help offset tuition.

"You can't name an office at this school I haven't painted," said Johnson, who graduated in 1989. He has two degrees from La Salle University and works as a martial-arts instructor and security consultant.

Supporters said they wanted the archdiocese to at least consider alternatives.

"We're going to do everything we can to change their minds," said Ken Costello of Lawndale, treasurer of the school's parent association. One daughter graduated last year, he said, and the other is a junior.

"Ideally, we'd like the school to stay open. Realistically, we'd like to keep it open three more years," until the freshmen graduate.

McFadden said it made little sense to keep the schools on life support. He pointed out that the city would still have eight Catholic high schools.

If the archdiocese doesn't consolidate schools, he said, tuition - $5,100 a year - will keep going up, he said.

For years, McFadden said, the archdiocese's lay financial council has "had the gun to my head" to cut costs. "They say, 'Bishop, what do you think you're doing? Bishop, you've got to make some decisions here,' " he said.

"If I hit the Powerball tonight, believe me, I would stop this tomorrow."