St. Joseph's Catholic school is the only Catholic school in New York City that has an open enrollment policy accepting any child regardless of faith, academic ability or emotional stability; yet, 95% of its students graduate in four years.
Mary Anastasia O'Grady reports on the music and
the sheer joy that had filled that school hall. It dawned on me that what had made my heart sing wasn't the trumpets or the flutes. It was the sound of 210 children, from one of the roughest neighborhoods in New York, beating the odds
St. Joseph's is a run-of-the-mill four-story structure of yellow brick. Like so many buildings in its neighborhood, it has heavy wire mesh covering the windows at street level. But what's on the inside of that ordinary schoolhouse makes it special. For the 491 Hispanic, African-American and West Indian students who attend kindergarten through eighth grade, it is a place of safety, structure and promise in a dangerous and disorderly world. The school band, which is mandatory for all students from fifth to eighth grade, reflects the discipline and sense of accomplishment that are synonymous with St. Joseph's student body.
Eighty percent of the children at the school are from single-parent homes or live with their grandparents; 85% live in Section 8 housing; and for 60% of them, English is not their first language. Most come from New York's notorious South Bronx, where the city's schools seem to devour the innocent. "The public schools in this area aren't good," the mother of a third-grader on scholarship was quoted as saying in St. Joseph's December newsletter. "The kids there grow up too fast. I wanted my son to go to a Catholic school." No wonder. Only 58% of New York's public school students graduate in four years, but the number is 95% for St. Joseph's students.
St. Joseph's and other Catholic schools, no longer staffed by nuns, are able to do it because of the generosity of private donors, many of them Wall St executives. Those who can give more do, like retired hedge-fund manager Robert Wilson, a self-proclaimed atheist who gave $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for needy inner-city students attending Roman Catholic schools.
In a phone interview, Wilson said,
`Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization. Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent. Keep in mind, I'm helping to pay tuition.
Hats off to St. Joseph's and Robert Wilson.