EDITORIAL: SOS: save our school (02/02/03)

EDITORIAL

SOS: save our school

The front page of this newspaper reports that yet another of our venerable community institutions in the United States faces the imminent threat of its demise. The institution is St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic School, the alma mater of thousands of young Ukrainian Americans who benefited from the solid education it has offered since 1939 when it first opened its doors in Newark, N.J.

It is a school that more properly could be called a magnet school to use the terminology in vogue today. It is a magnet for students from various parts of New Jersey; students from towns and cities near and far attend the school because it not only offers an excellent education, and a Christian education, but also an education that is focused on the Ukrainian heritage. That's what makes the school unique. Parents send their children there because they firmly believe that an education in the Ukrainian spirit is worth the extra effort - the extra miles of driving, the extra inconvenience, and yes, the extra cost (after all, there are plenty of excellent public schools in New Jersey that cost $0). They believe in what the school has to offer, and they see the results every day. They also know they are immeasurably fortunate that St. John's has created a caring and nurturing community, where each and every child is truly loved. Now they, and the community at large, may lose this priceless treasure.

The good news is that the parents have pledged to do their utmost to save St. John's. They simply will not let it close without a fight. However, they need help. Raising a quarter of a million dollars is no small task, and the deadline - a mere two and a half months away - makes it so much more difficult to accomplish.

But why should the Ukrainian community care about the fate of this particular school? Why does this cause deserve their support?

The number of truly Ukrainian schools, as readers are no doubt aware, has been decreasing for some time now. Furthermore, some of the Ukrainian parochial schools that continue to exist have all but done away with the Ukrainian component of their programs - they have remained simply Catholic schools. (Some of them can boast of fewer than a tenth of their students being of Ukrainian background.) To be sure, they are wonderful institutions, and they, too, deserve support. But St. John's is a rare gem.

Consider also that St. John's is schoolchildren's first exposure to organized Ukrainian community life. Through this school the kids learn, and feel, that they are part of something greater than themselves, larger than their immediate family, stronger than their local school. That something is the Ukrainian community and the Ukrainian nation.

What is even more significant is that more than half of the current student population at St. John's is made up of children of the Fourth Wave of immigrants to this country. What better way to involve these newly arrived Ukrainians in the life of our community here and thus to ensure our community's existence? As these students attend St. John's they naturally become a part of our community; along with them their parents become active, working side by side with their peers, the Ukrainians born in this country.

Perhaps another way to argue this point is to ask: If we can support Ukrainian schools in Ukraine, why can't we - why shouldn't we - support Ukrainian schools here? Why don't we feel the same need to help our children in this country?

Recent developments at St. John's Parish have made it crystal clear what needs to be done to save St. John's School: $250,000 has to be raised in the next few weeks - by April 15 - in order for the school to reopen its doors come September 2003. And that will buy the school time to work toward ensuring its future beyond the next academic year. Otherwise the school will close this June, never to open again.

It is equally clear that in the more than six decades of its existence St. John's has been responsible for educating many of our leading community activists. In a sense, then, all of us can consider St. John's to be our school. All of us can also help save it.

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