When the Maronda Foundation eliminated funding for Mt. Gallitzin Academy, a 107-year-old Catholic school in Baden, the Sisters of St. Joseph ran out of options.
Mt. Gallitzin, overwhelmed by declining enrollment, rising costs and the loss of support from Maronda, which gave the Beaver County school more than $500,000 from 2004-06, will not reopen for the 2009-10 school year. The school has 152 students, 13 full- and part-time lay teachers, and 10 teachers from the Sisters of St. Joseph.
"Despite our very best efforts to continue an educational ministry that is so dear to our hearts and history, we believe ... that we have exhausted all avenues for financial viability," Sister Mary Pellegrino of the Sisters of St. Joseph, said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.
The Maronda Foundation is the charity arm of Maronda Homes in Robinson, founded 37 years ago by the late William J. Wolf, a conservative Catholic who quietly supported Catholicism and Catholic education.
"He favored conservative Catholic schools," said the Rev. Bill Hausen, pastor of Christ Hope Church in Brighton Heights and formerly an assistant pastor at St. James in Sewickley, where Wolf and his wife, Mary, were members. Wolf died a year ago at 78.
A foundation spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Its support for area Catholic schools dropped more than half from 2005-07 — from $5.1 million to $2.5 million, according to forms that the foundation is required to file with the IRS.
"We are living in an economic time when a number of donors and benefactors are tightening up," said the Rev. Kris Stubna, secretary for education for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, which announced Sunday that it will close four of its schools. "Hopefully, we can hang on."
The move will have no effect on the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, said spokesman Jerry Zufelt.
"We checked, and we don't have anything in our records," he said, referring to foundation donations.
Maronda has built more than 20,000 homes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia and Florida, according to its Web site. A company spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Florida was among the states hardest hit by the collapse of the housing market in late 2007.
"Prices rose 30, 40, 50 percent the annual rate, and then the bubble popped," said Adam York, an analyst with Wachovia Bank. "Homebuilders took a pretty good hit."
Housing activity in some parts of the state, where Maronda has hundreds of properties listed on its Web site, has all but dried up, York said. Building permits are down 80 to 90 percent, he added. The fallout could be felt 1,000 miles away.
"I have a huge knot in my stomach," said Gemma Kaunert, treasurer of Mt. Gallitzin's Parent-Teacher Guild. Her daughter, Kathryn, 10, is a fourth-grader at the school, and her son, Grant, 7, is a first-grader. "We will have to explore other options."
Kaunert said she was encouraged earlier this year, when an open house attracted a large number of prospective students and their parents.
At the end of this school year, the diocese is closing St. Titus in Aliquippa, St. Elizabeth Seton Regional School in the West End, Bishop McDowell Regional School in Baldwin Borough and St. Valentine School in Bethel Park.
Tuition pays for 60 percent of the cost of education in the diocese, Stubna said. The remainder of the money comes from the parishes and donations.
"A number of our donors don't have enough to allocate, and they are making some tough decisions," he said.
Stubna said the Maronda Foundation has been one of the diocese's strongest supporters of education. When Elizabeth Seton Regional School was slated to close in 2001, the foundation stepped in — keeping it open another eight years.
The foundation has given Elizabeth Seton more than $1.85 million since 2003.
St. James Parish in Sewickley, like Mt. Gallitzin Academy, had its funding from the foundation drop to nothing in 2007, after receiving $100,000 in 2006.
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