The closure of a slew of schools across the archdiocese has claimed another victim.
Brother Tim Ahern, the president of West Catholic High School, has resigned his post effective immediately, the archdiocese announced yesterday.
Ahern had found himself in the center of a firestorm because of his decision not to appeal the ruling of the archdiocese Blue Ribbon Commission that West be closed. It was the only one of the four high schools not to do so.
Ahern did so because the numbers told him there was no future for West Catholic. It wasn’t necessarily that he would not like to see the school continue, but the financial situation – due mostly to declining enrollment - simply was not one that he foresaw being reversed.
More than that, Ahern did not want to get anyone’s hopes up unnecessarily, only to have them dashed once again.
That obviously also has been much on the mind of the Rev. James Olson, the president of Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast High School in Drexel Hill.
We got word yesterday that if the boosters looking to save the school – or at least a merged version of it – could get their fundraising efforts to $2.5 million (they're at about $1.5 million now), an anonymous benefactor would fork over a matching $2.5 million. That would get them to the $5 million threshold that Olson says is needed to make the school viable into the future.
No one yesterday would confirm the benefactor, but as with almost everything else about this story, it was blazing across the Internet via Facebooka and Twitter.
We also heard that there could be a delay in the ruling on the appeals from Archbishop Charles Chaput, due in part to him being preoccupied with the funeral of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. A ruling was expected on Wednesday, Feb. 15. Now all the archdiocese is saying is that they expect a ruling to come down sometime in mid-February. That could be the 15th, or it could be later.
In the meantime, the wait is proving tough for all involved.
Staff writer Jeff Wolfe has more here. And we’ll have another preview on Monday to what should be a huge week for Catholic education, both here in Delaware County and across the region.
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