Conaty High Wins Reprieve; Loretto Will Close Instead

In the face of strong protests, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced Tuesday that it has abandoned plans to close Bishop Conaty High School, one of its oldest inner-city girls’ schools.

But church officials said they will preserve the Conaty campus by closing another girls’ high school, 249-student Our Lady of Loretto, and moving those students to Conaty beginning in September.

Both schools, which have seen enrollment drop to less than 300 each in recent years as tuitions have climbed, serve predominantly Latino and black students and are located in the low-income area west of downtown.

The decision was a victory for current and former students of 65-year-old Conaty High School, who wrote letters and demonstrated to save their school after the archdiocese announced last January that it planned to close the Pico Boulevard campus. At the time, the archdiocese cited the need to spend $1.3 million to repair earthquake-damaged buildings at the 288-student school, as well as the continuing decline in enrollment.

Many Students Need Aid

The enrollment decline has been attributed to a combination of rising tuition and poorer families in the inner city. One-fifth of Conaty’s families require special assistance to meet the $1,350-a-year tuition, which is lower than many archdiocese high schools.

In a statement Tuesday, Msgr. Aidan Carroll, superintendent of archdiocese schools, said the decision to consolidate Bishop Conaty and Our Lady of Loretto was made after months of study and discussion with representatives of the two schools. Citing the small enrollments at both schools, Carroll said, “It simply is no longer possible to continue a quality education . . . in such small schools.”

Loretto officials were not immediately available, but archdiocese spokesman Bill Rivera acknowledged that “there may be some unhappiness.”

The plan calls for much of the main building at Conaty, badly damaged in the October, 1987, Whittier earthquake, to be demolished. It will be replaced by a $3-million facility with a capacity for 500 students. When completed, Conaty will have new classrooms, a gymnasium, administrative offices and an athletic field. Building at Conaty “will be an important sign of the church’s commitment to offer a Catholic educational program for inner-city young women for many years in the future,” Carroll said.

Like public school systems, the archdiocese has had a hard time managing school closures and declining enrollment. Five years ago, the church was forced to back off its plans to close another inner-city school, Cathedral High, after an outpouring of protests.

Rivera said now that the Bishop Conaty High School issue has been settled, the archdiocese plans to proceed with a broader study of how to deal with declining enrollment at high schools throughout the archdiocese.

Asked if the consolidation of Conaty and Loretto is an indication of what is to come, Rivera said, “I’m not sure that’s in the wings.”