BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer

OCEAN TOWNSHIP - The students, parents and staff of St. Mary of the Assumption School were informed on March 30 that the school will reopen in September as a regional entity with a new name and the support of four area parishes.

In a letter to the school community, Dr. Judith A. Caviston, diocesan secretary for Catholic education, advised that as of July 1, the school will have the name Pope John XXIII Regional School. The school will be financially supported by four parishes. In addition to St. Mary Church, Deal, which had been the sole source of subsidy, the school will now include St. Michael's Church, West End; Church of St. Anselm, Wayside, and St. Dorothea Church, Eatontown, Caviston reported.

Citing increasing tuition costs and the inability of St. Mary's parish to financially maintain the school on its own, Caviston described the decision by Bishop John M. Smith to regionalize St. Mary as "an effort to preserve the mission of the school and to protect its future."

She added that the new regional school will be governed by a school board of limited jurisdiction, which will guide the temporal affairs, and a committee of pastors to represent the supporting parishes.

Bishop Smith has appointed the Rev. Charles B. Weiser, pastor of St. Michael's Church, to serve as the chairman of the pastor's committee, and to be a member of the school board. His term for both of these posts will be three years, she said.

She explained that the chosen name was a recognition of Pope John XXIII's ecumenical spirit and efforts to bring various communities of faith together for dialogue and service.

St. Mary School currently has about 176 students, with single sections for grades pre-K through 8 and a capacity for 250 students. Marie Busch-Beebe is the principal. No changes in teaching staff or administration are expected in the regionalization plan.

The school was one of two schools originally recommended for closure by the Monmouth County Task Force as part of the diocese's strategic planning process.

In January, Bishop Smith permitted the school to stay open on the merits of the alternate plan its representatives had submitted to the diocese. However, recent budget deliberations revealed that St. Mary parish was unable to provide the necessary support to keep the school going.

According to the task force draft report, the parish was not viable enough to support a Catholic school because the parish has fewer households and the demographic trends suggest further decline. Only 14 children were baptized in 2003, and 187 were enrolled in the religious education program.

Another expense facing the school will be the need for a new roof in the near future, and cash reserves are not available to pay for major capital repairs.

The strategic plan found that community demographic trends project that the total population in Monmouth County is increasing, but all of the growth is among ages 15 to 29 and over 50.

The study maintains that the viability of Catholic schools is related to the health of the parishes that support them. Based on an average of 2.69 people per household, the study estimates that Monmouth County may have 252,000 Catholics, which represents 39.4 percent of the overall population.

The average cost per pupil in Monmouth County Catholic elementary schools was $4,045 in 2003-04, an 8 percent increase over the previous year. The cost of Catholic education continues to rise faster than the overall rate of inflation or the rate of growth in personal income, the study said.