Worcester Business Journal

8 Worcester Business Journal | March 2, 2020 | wbjournal.com PHOTO/GRANT WELKER St. Bernard's High School in Fitchburg has seen enrollment drop sharply in the last nearly two decades. St. Bernard's enrollment '02 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 '04 '06 '08 '10 '12 '14 '16 '18 '19 Number of students enrolled 532 134 Source: Massachusetts Department of Education Saving their school A group of Fitchburg business leaders have come together to keep St. Bernard's high school solvent BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor F itchburg had seen the decline in Catholic church attendance exact a toll on city neighborhoods. All at once in 2010, four churches in the city closed, leaving behind blighted buildings at what were once cornerstones of their communities. Business leaders and the city's mayor didn't want to see the same happen to St. Bernard's Central Catholic High School. A group made up largely of alumni has come together to ensure the school will stay open, even as it will no longer receive financial support from its longtime formal tie with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester. "We weren't looking to support the school just to keep it on life support," said alumnus Nick Pelletier, a real estate agent for Pelletier Properties, a Keller Williams realty office, and the treasurer of the Bernardian Foundation, a newly formed group aimed at supporting the school. Pelletier is one of a group largely made up of local businesspeople who joined to ensure the school wouldn't become another vacant space in the city. Another is Fitchburg Mayor Stephen DiNatale, a St. Bernard's graduate himself. DiNatale sees keeping the school, which sits a one-minute drive south of downtown, as vital to an effort to draw more families and growth to the city. "Education is part of economic development," DiNatale said. Demographic struggles St. Bernard's, which turns a century old this year, has been struggling for years with declining enrollment. e school has a capacity for 800 students, but its student body numbered 134 in the 2018-'19 school year, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education. at's a drop of three-quarters from 2002, the year when enrollment was 532. St. Bernard's hasn't been alone. e Fitchburg school and three others affiliated with the Diocese of Worcester – the middle and high schools Holy Name and St. Peter- Marian, and St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School in Worcester – have had a 13% drop in enrollment in the past five years. Enrollment at Holy Name and St. Peter-Marian, which will merge next school year, fell by more than half in the past 15 years, a drop the diocese said would be worse if not for a reliance on international students. ose two schools, along with St. Bernard's and St. Peter Central Catholic, were helped with more than $450,000 in church subsidies in 2018, according to diocese financial reports. Already, St. Bernard's has brought in a larger percentage of non-Catholic students. e school, which includes a daily theology class in its curriculum and a monthly religious service, is 75% Catholic today, a ratio the foundation expects to move closer to 50/50 in the coming years. Needing to be self-sufficient e diocese, the branch of the Catholic Church that oversees the region, told St. Bernard's last year it could no longer financially support the school. e diocese ran a deficit of around $1.4 million in fiscal 2019, the second straight year it failed to break even. at sparked fears about long- running rumors of St. Bernard's closing possibly coming true. "e rumors have been around for so long they became self-fulfilling," said Linda Anderson, who is in her first year as St. Bernard's principal aer almost a decade as a teacher there. Bishop Robert McManus, the top Leaders committed to keeping St. Bernard's operating includes (from left) Nicholas Pelletier, president of Pelletier Properties in Leominster; Keith Boissoneau, vice president for finance at Sterilite in Townsend; Linda Anderson, principal of St. Bernard's; Laura Reynolds, the president of FHC Industrial Supply in Leominster; John Zarrella, the president of Research Results in Fitchburg; Fitchburg Mayor Stephen DiNatale; Greg Moran, a commercial real estate consultant at Aubuchon Hardware in Westminster; and Laura Rainville, the manager of 873 Cafe in Ashby.

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