"Bucking a trend, Allentown Diocese sees two-year rise in Catholic school enrollment"

read all about it @ http://articles.mcall.com/2013-11-22/news/mc-allentown-catholic-school-enrollment-increase-20131122_1_catholic-diocese-school-enrollment-seton-academy



"No one's calling it a miracle yet, but school enrollment in the Catholic Diocese of Allentown has grown two years straight.
It's the only one of the eight dioceses in Pennsylvania to mark growth in consecutive years, and it's what you might call counterintuitive news. Catholic schools, like Catholic churches, have been closing apace these many years, and more than a few doomsayers have envisioned the end of the system that has imparted faith-based instruction to generations of Americans, Catholic and otherwise.

Not so fast, it seems. After 15 years of steady decline — losing as many as 500 students some years — the five-county diocese in 2010 formed a commission to take a hard look at its system.
The Bishop's Commission on Catholic Schools determined the problem was not the product — education — but in the mechanics of how it was offered.
"It was a business problem, not an academics problem," said Jim Friend, director of the diocesan Office of Stewardship and Development.
Even with the closure of the Seton Academy in Bethlehem this year, total diocese enrollment is 12,419 students — up more than one-half of 1 percent over last year and the second straight uptick. The diocese has 36 elementary schools, seven high schools and three special learning centers in Berks, Carbon, Schuylkill, Lehigh and Northampton counties."