Class Act : Cathedral High Finally Gets New Freshmen as $100,000 Donation Helps Revitalize School

Incoming freshmen at Cathedral High School have traditionally been greeted with imaginative, though not always pleasant, hazing stunts by older students. On Tuesday, however, they were welcomed with loud cheers and speeches, including an announcement by Mayor Tom Bradley of a $100,000 donation for the school.

The unprecedented red-carpet treatment marked the 60-year-old Catholic school’s return to relative normalcy after a hard-fought, 18-month battle waged by students, parents and alumni to keep the largely Latino boys’ preparatory school near Chinatown from being closed.

The new students--the first admitted this school year--are a concrete symbol of the effort’s victorious outcome. No freshmen were admitted last September because the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese was planning at the time to go through with its plan, announced in 1984, to close the school because of declining enrollment.

Last December, however, Archbishop Roger Mahony, newly appointed archdiocesan leader, reversed the archdiocese’s previous position and announced that the school would remain open.

“Last September, the school’s future was in doubt,” Bradley told students assembled in the school gymnasium. But now, Cathedral’s “outstanding educational services will be continued.” He commended the school’s students and alumni for “keeping alive the vision and spirit” that the school represents.

The school, which Bradley said “has become a symbol of quality education for inner-city and minority students,” has served successive waves of immigrant children over its history. And for many of the present students, the school is a family tradition. Many of the new freshmen said they were particularly pleased to attend the school because their older brothers, cousins or uncles had graduated there.

In presenting the $100,000 to the Christian Brothers, who run the school, Bradley said it came from a “friend and supporter who wanted to do something for Cathedral” but who wished to remain anonymous.

Brother Martin Yribarren, principal, said later that the money will be used for scholarships. He said that profits from the Christian Brothers’ winery in the Napa Valley subsidize about half the tuition cost for the school’s 350 students, in addition to providing full scholarships for the most needy students.

“But while expenses are growing, our profits are not,” Yribarren said, adding that the school has sought help from alumni in raising funds to avoid an increase in the annual $1,200-per-student tuition fee.

Friends of Cathedral, a group of alumni who led the campaign to save Cathedral, originally convened about two years ago to raise money for the school, recalled the group’s president, Henry Alfaro.

“The difficult struggle of saving the school is over,” he said. “Now we can get back to doing what we originally set out to do.”