EDITORIAL: Our most precious community resource (06/08/03)

EDITORIAL

Our most precious community resource

This week's issue of our newspaper carries a front-page story announcing the establishment of a not-for-profit charitable foundation whose goal is to support two community institutions with a long and illustrious history. We speak of St. George School and St. George Academy in New York City.

The elementary and secondary schools affiliated with St. George Ukrainian Catholic Parish - founded, respectively, in 1941 and 1946 - have been experiencing financial difficulties for over a decade. The situation reached a crisis point in November of 1999 when it was announced that the schools were to close down the following June. A group of determined parents, however, came to the rescue. Organizing a "save our schools" movement, they vowed to preserve the St. George schools and to raise the funds needed to accomplish that goal.

Apparently their work has borne fruit. The schools did not close down as had been threatened and serious work has continued to secure their future. The most recent establishment of the St. George Ukrainian Catholic Schools Foundation, Ltd., along with the announcement that the foundation has set up an Endowment Fund are sure signs that this is a vibrant school community. The fund, which seeks to raise $3 million, aims to ensure not only the school's functioning in the near term, but also its long-term survival.

Perhaps the best news of all is that it seems all segments of the community are involved in the foundation: it includes not only parents and school administrators, but also the pastor of St. George Church and the leader of the Stamford Eparchy of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Bishop Basil Losten. Such a list of incorporators can only portend success in achieving the foundation's goals.

Across the Hudson River, in New Jersey, another school was in the news earlier this year: St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic School in Newark. Founded in 1939, the school was threatened with closing unless a newly organized yet extremely vocal group of parents and supporters could raise $250,000 by April 15. If that feat was accomplished, the pastor and parish council promised, the school would be open during academic year 2003-2004. In mid-April it was publicly announced that St. John's would reopen for the next academic year as $180,000 already had been collected and the prospects of collecting the remainder were excellent.

Since then, there has been some backtracking on the pastor's and parish trustees' part, but the parents' resolve remains strong and their efforts to maintain the school remain on track. Most recently, the Committee for the Development of St. John's School (as the ad hoc parents' group had been called) has been reconstituted as a school advisory board and its leaders were formally elected. That bodes well for the future of St. John's School.

The key ingredient, however, is support from sources outside the parish community, as it has been clearly stated that St. John's Parish alone cannot afford to keep the school functioning, and beyond the parents whose children are enrolled at St. John's, many of whom are members of the latest wave of immigrants to this country and right now cannot afford to pay full tuition.

Our sincere hope, is that members of our Ukrainian American community, our community institutions and our organizations will be ready and willing to step up to the plate and support our most precious resource: our children, whether they are in New York, or New Jersey, or anywhere else within our hromada. These are the next generations of our community, and their upbringing should be of concern to us all.

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