I am a devout and relatively conservative lifelong Catholic and a 17-year member of St. William of York Parish. My three children all attended St. William of York School from kindergarten through eighth grade and are now enrolled at Seton Keough High School, Mt. St. Joseph High School and the Cardinal Gibbons School. In the aftermath of the decision by the Archdiocese of Baltimore to close 13 Catholic schools, I would like to offer the following observations.

It has been no secret that some of the schools in the Archdiocese of Baltimore have been struggling for some time, and Archbishop Edwin O'Brien was certainly correct in seeing the need to address the issues surrounding those schools. I am well aware of the process that the Archbishop's Blue Ribbon Committee undertook in assessing the current situation in all of our Catholic schools, and, in fact, participated in the process myself. The work of this committee was no doubt daunting and arduous, and they are to be commended on their efforts. Unfortunately, the decisions that came out of their efforts appear to be based on some rather unwise assumptions.

The issue of "surplus capacity" loomed large in the decision to close schools. Archbishop O'Brien has stated on more than one occasion that there are 10,000 empty seats in our Catholic schools, or one third of the total capacity of the schools. While this number appears to be quite ominous, it is of vital importance to realize that an empty seat is only a liability to a school if that school is struggling financially. It would be difficult to argue that under-enrollment is not a serious concern in a school that cannot meet its payroll, pay its bills, or repay its debts. However, if a school with empty seats is financially stable, then those empty seats become a valuable commodity which translates into small class sizes. Many families choose Catholic schools, at least in part, for the promise of small class sizes when compared to public schools. As an example, it has been stated that Seton Keough High School was built to accommodate 1,300 students, though it currently only houses approximately 500. I would venture to guess that if 800 more students appeared at the doors of Seton Keough on Monday morning, the school would lose most of the 500 who are currently enrolled there. There is no question that there are empty seats in our schools, but how many of them are actually liabilities and how many of them are assets? I doubt the "real" liability is nearly as great as the picture painted by the archbishop.

Another misguided assumption on the part of the archbishop is that he can blindly make intimate family decisions for people he does not know. The decision to send a child to a Catholic school is a very personal and very unique decision to each of the families of the 2,000-plus students affected by these closings. While I can only speak for the schools that my family is involved with, many of the options given to displaced students are really not options at all. Cardinal Gibbons students were given a list of 10 schools to choose from. Six of those schools are co-educational schools. Cardinal Gibbons is a boys school. That was a huge factor in our family's decision process. One of the schools is in Belair and one is in Annapolis. How many families on the southwest side of Baltimore will find it logistically possible to send their boys that far away? Some of the other options are not feasible because the families make either to little or too much money to afford or qualify financially for the schools. With regard to the grade school options, an under-performing school in a rough neighborhood almost six miles away is no more of an option than is a high school that currently uses all but three of its classrooms. These are two of the three options that St. William of York students have been given. (It should be noted that St. William of York is a financially stable school that has yet to be given the real reasons for its closure.) Their third choice is only a mile away, but parents are being told that the tuition will be $1,100 more than the tuition stated by the archdiocese, and they surely cannot accommodate the 170-plus students that are currently enrolled at St. William's. Does the archbishop realize that many of these choices are not only laughable but insulting to the families whose lives he has just torn apart?

I think that Brother Bill Griffin, pastoral associate at St. Rose of Lima school, really struck the core of what has been wrong about this whole process with his comments in The Baltimore Sun (Readers respond, March 13). He stated that "The heart of a Catholic school and of our church is the sacredness and dignity of each person." This essential pillar of our Catholic faith has been entirely ignored by our Archdiocese of Baltimore. They claim to have offered everyone the opportunity to have input into the process by attending the Blue Ribbon Committee's public hearings. Those meetings sought ideas and opinions in very general, sweeping terms about our Catholic schools. That does not come close to respecting the dignity of each individual involved in the closing of a specific school. What was needed here was a cooperative, transparent process which may very well have led to the same results, but which would have engaged the real people involved and made the outcome much more tolerable.

In the March 11th issue of the Catholic Review, Archbishop O'Brien likened the "consolidation of schools" (a term which in and of itself is insulting to those of us involved) to surgery. He stated that "Both are painful but necessary for the body (this local Church and its historic school system) to heal." I find this comparison both revealing and loathsome. It illustrates just how little he understands the magnitude of what he has just done to his community. When a person has surgery, the doctor, who is educated and extremely well-versed in his field of operation, explains to the patient why the surgery is necessary, what will be done, and how the outcome will benefit the patient in the long-run. The patient is given the opportunity to ask questions, explore other options and ultimately make the decision as to whether or not the surgery takes place. None of that has been done in this school closure process.

As I acknowledged earlier, there were certainly some concerns that needed to be addressed in the Archdiocesan school system. But the manner in which the "surgery" was handled has shown complete disregard for "the sacredness and dignity of each person" involved. And as a result, many wonderful Catholic school families can no longer trust the church to which they entrusted their precious children. The archbishop would have served the children of these schools far better by developing a contingency plan, so that, in the event of a school failure, the Archdiocese could have been in a position to help these children find real alternatives in the very difficult times that arise as a result of such a devastating occurrence.

Gretchen Parry