Archdiocese to Keep School and May Reopen It Someday

The Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese will retain the campus of the former Pater Noster High School for at least five years, and may at some time consider reopening the school, officials said last week.

Pater Noster was closed in June, a victim of declining enrollment. Its students and teachers were dispersed to other Catholic and public schools in the Northeast Los Angeles area.

When the closure was announced, the archdiocese said it had not yet decided what to do with the 8.5-acre campus at San Fernando Road and the Glendale Freeway.

Ending speculation that the property might be sold, officials from the archdiocese’s Department of Education said last week that the campus, will be offered for a five-year lease. They added that Pater Noster could one day open its gates again.

The archdiocese, which purchased the former Theme Hosiery factory in 1960 and converted it into a college preparatory school for boys, plans to include the building in a long-term strategic plan for Catholic education in the three-county archdiocese.

Brother Hilarion O’Connor, budget director for secondary education, said the school could be given a second chance in about five years.

“We do not know what the future will hold for schools in that area,” O’Connor said. “We are not shutting the door to reopening the school in the future.”

In the meantime, the archdiocese is seeking a tenant to rent the four-story concrete structure for five years. Already the Los Angeles City Fire Department, the Los Angeles Police Department and a private school have inquired about the building, although no formal proposals for the site have been made, O’Connor said.

O’Connor said he hopes to have a tenant installed there by next summer.

Pater Noster was closed with only one week’s notice to the 192 students who were enrolled there.

Enrollment had dropped from a peak of about 325, and officials from the archdiocese said they simply could not continue to give the school the large subsidies that were required to keep it open.

But O’Connor said he believes that many more families in the humble old neighborhoods of Northeast Los Angeles would have sent their sons to Pater Noster if they could have afforded it.

“If we had been able to give a larger package of financil assistance, we would have had a much larger student population,” he said.

As part of the long-term plan, the archdiocese will examine the number of potential students in the area and analyze how much tuition members of the community could afford to pay, he said.

If the study finds that the school could attract a significant number of students by lowering tuition or offering more financial aid, then it could be reopened, O’Connor said.

“We’d have to find the minimum number of students that would make it cost effective to run,” he said.

The study will also examine other sources of financial assistance and the effect on enrollment of making the school coeducational and adding improvements such as a gymnasium.