Two Catholic schools in Allegheny County will close while four others will merge into a single school in the South Hills in efforts to confront declining enrollment and climbing debt, officials announced Friday.

St. Maria Goretti School in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood and East Catholic School in Forest Hills will close after the end of this academic year.

In the South Hills, St. Anne School in Castle Shannon and Our Lady of Grace School in Scott will merge with St. Bernard School in Mt. Lebanon and St. Thomas More School in Bethel Park to form one unified school. The new school will serve all students at two preschool-8th grade campuses, one at St. Thomas More’s building and the other at St. Bernard.

It’s unclear what will happen to the properties closing down.

“As hard as it is to lose a beloved school, these steps will help Catholic education remain affordable, accessible and sustainable for a new generation,” Bishop David Zubik, of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, said in a statement.

Along with input from parents, principals and parish leaders, Zubik approved the school closures based on a recommendation by the board overseeing the Pittsburgh-East Regional Catholic Elementary Schools.

Among factors that drove the decision to close the K-8 schools:

• St. Maria Goretti’s enrollment dropped from 172 in 2016-17 to 131 this year, while confronting a debt burden topping $800,000 as of last year.

• East Catholic enrollment fell from 255 in 2016-17 down to 172 this year, with a debt burden projected to top $600,000 by June.

Zubik decided on the South Hills merger based on a recommendation by the South Regional Catholic Elementary Schools Advisory Board.

“We are especially eager to sustain support for children of special needs or from low-income or immigrant households, and we also hope to incorporate the excellent features of each school’s curriculum and programming,” said the Rev. David Poecking, a member of the South Regional board.

The changes are part of a major reorganization by the diocese and its schools in recent years.

Goals of the so-called “regional governance” plan include improving the private education system’s financial competitiveness and increasing enrollment by sharing resources and rolling out a uniform tuition rate. “Instead of one parish supporting one school, all of the parishes in a geographic region will support all of the schools in that region,” diocesan officials said in a news release.

Like Mass attendance, enrollment in Catholic schools has been on the decline. In 2000, about 24,000 students were enrolled in 102 diocesan schools. By 2016, about 12,000 students were enrolled in 59 schools.

In 2017, several North Hills schools became the first to undergo major changes using the regionalization model, and their finances and enrollment already are proving to stabilize there, according to the diocese.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)