The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced last week that it will close 26 of its 147 K-8 schools at the end of the school year. It will reopen four of those schools as regional schools in September.
About 250 teachers and 3,000 students will be affected by the closings in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, according to Frank De Rosa, a spokesman for the Brooklyn Diocese.
Mr. De Rosa said most of the schools that are being closed enroll non-Catholics as well as Catholic students and are located in both low-income and middle-class neighborhoods. The schools scheduled for reopening as regional schools will be in low-income neighborhoods, he said.
Student enrollment in parish schools in Brooklyn and Queens has dropped by 11,000 students in the past five years and is now 45,000. The diocese gave $7 million last school year to schools that weren’t able to meet their expenses.
