Leaders and supporters of the Venango Region Catholic School system in Oil City are going full bore with their campaign to keep Venango Catholic High School open beyond the end of this school year.
The school system is trying to meet several goals set by the Erie Diocese that would allow the high school, which now houses students in grades seven through 12, to move forward into the 2024-25 year.
The diocese has said that if the goals aren’t met, the high school would close in June and students who would be in seventh and eighth grades in the next school year would continue their education at St. Stephen Elementary School.
One of the goals from the diocese is for the school system to find a permanent, full-time president by Jan. 1.
Interim president Ray Feroz, a Venango Christian High School graduate and retired Clarion University professor, took over leadership of the school system earlier this summer from Dominic Varacallo.
Feroz said in an interview this week with the newspaper that the school system board is moving toward interviewing candidates.
Feroz, who has served on the school board, said that “as far as I know it’s (the interviewing process) going OK. I understand it’s progressing, though, in terms of their moving forward with interviews.”
The stated goals for the 2024-25 school year are that there should be 40 students in grades 9-12 and 20 students in grades 7-8. There are currently 32 students enrolled in grades 9-12 and 15 enrolled in 7-8.
Those numbers are down from October, which Feroz admitted is “concerning.”
To help boost enrollment, the school system has conducted special recruitment events for sixth graders at the high school, such as a tea and craft project event and a Steelers tailgate and chili cook-off event.
“That’s part of what we’re doing to attract the next generation of seventh graders because that’s important to keep the school census good,” Feroz said.
He said they are focusing not only on sixth graders at St. Stephen but also sixth graders at Immaculate Conception in Clarion and St. Joseph in Lucinda.
The school system has even offered a one-time, nine-week free tuition no-risk opportunity for parents to enroll their children at St. Stephen or Venango Catholic High School to try out Catholic education.
The offer ends Monday, Dec. 18, and Feroz said that so far the school system has heard from four families who are interested in this opportunity.
“We’ve sent out postcards, we’ve talked about it in the newsletter and it’s been in church bulletins. I would have hoped for more, but four is better than nothing,” Feroz said.
If the parents and students like the schools, they can stay for the rest of the spring semester, and “we’ll pro-rate the tuition for the remainder of the year, with some scholarship help available,” Feroz said.
“I have faith that we could still see some good gains and numbers,” he said.
“I don’t think the diocesan goals are unreasonable,” Feroz added. “The bishop gave us those goals. We have to avoid a situation where the high school, with continued declining enrollment, would end up going bankrupt. We can’t let that happen.”
He also said that “besides the financial (consequences) of low enrollment, students would not have a reasonable number of classmates, and there would not be enough students to field customary high school sports teams.”
Venango Catholic’s cash-on-hand goal is to have $600,000 by the end of this month, and there is currently $300,000 on-hand.
There is also $150,000 in donations, grants and pledges, and the goal is to have additional pledges of $400,000 by Dec. 31.
“We’re not very close on the money,” Feroz said, “but we’re making progress, but at the rate we’re making progress, it’s not going to be hitting the goal by Jan. 1.”
“Besides appealing for donations and writing grants, fundraisers are a huge piece of it (raising money),” Feroz said.
One of those fundraisers, Breakfast with Santa, was held last weekend and included a Chinese auction, 50/50 and photos with Santa.
And the school system also advertises upcoming events and fundraisers in its new monthly newsletters. The newsletters also alert people about what is happening at both schools.
Volunteers are appealing for funding help by developing master emails and other mailing lists, regular announcements in church bulletins, making presentations at Catholic and other churches, and making personal appeals to local businesses and donors.
The school system is also working with the diocesan RedefinED program to tap into state tax redirection programs that benefit educational institutions.
“I’m not saying it will happen (that the school will close), because it’s really the diocese’s decision,” Feroz said. “They may or may not, but they’ve reserved the right that if we don’t hit those numbers, that they would say, ‘OK, we’ve got to eliminate the high school’ because they don’t want to see it run into the ground with red ink,” Feroz said.
Feroz also discussed the advantages of Catholic education, such as “highly desirable” teacher-student ratios, students benefiting spiritually and morally and seeds of Roman Catholic/Christian faith being planted.
And even though Feroz recognized the high school is behind on its goals, he’s “optimistic that we’re praying hard and we’re working hard, and so where things end up is where they end up and it’s God’s will.”
“It could be that we don’t meet the goals and the diocese says (it) can’t run the high school anymore. But if that happens, that’s meant to be. If we didn’t pray hard and work hard along the way, then I’d think, ‘Well, I should have worked harder or had more fundraisers’,” Feroz said.
