Mary Valle:  Listeners to commercial broadcast radio in Baltimore may have been surprised in the past month to hear an earnest, distinctly mid-Atlantic voice delivering a message about the closing of Catholic schools in the city and urging parishioners to withhold funds from the collection plate in protest. Daniel Schuster, a local concrete magnate, has taken his case to the airwaves in hopes of getting the archdiocese to reconsider their plans, especially the closing of Father Charles Hall, an inner-city school he has supported for the past 15 years. Schuster has offered $700,000 to the Archdiocese to keep the schools running until “they can become charter schools or independent.”

Dan Rodricks, writing in the Baltimore Sun, suggests a “Wichita solution” wherein parishioners would commit 3 to 5 percent of their income to create tuition-free parish schools. Meanwhile, the 13 schools, which comprise a real estate portfolio worth more than $25 million, are still on track to close with rumors abounding that the money will be used to pay for the $34 million restoration of the downtown Basilica, which was undertaken before the recession hit.

Also in the Sun, Jean Marbella notes that perhaps the “golden era” of Catholic schools has passed, since enrollments are down, and the free labor of nuns has all but vanished.

None of this makes it any easier for the families and students who have suddenly been displaced for the next school year. Brady Fischer, a sophomore at doomed Cardinal Gibbons, where he plays football and lacrosse, can’t bear the thought of having to attend the nearest “receiving school.” He says, poignantly,  “I cannot play any sort of sport for my rival sports school. It’s impossible.”

That’s something no one should have to think about, Brady.

For more on Catholic-to-charter school conversions read here and here.