Manhattan Catholic School’s Vitality Fueled by New Generation of Immigrants : Education: St. Joseph’s, on the impoverished Lower East Side, has survived by adapting. Some of its pupils will be present as the Pope celebrates Mass today.

Once a year, St. Joseph’s School, a Catholic elementary school in the heart of New York’s impoverished Lower East Side, honors the Chinese New Year with a special Mass.

Before the religious services, several students perform the traditional Chinese dragon dance. At the end, they honor their ancestors by burning incense, making offerings of oranges and bowing deeply.

St. Joseph’s has survived for seven decades by bending with the wind. Founded in 1927 to serve the children of Italian immigrants living in nearby tenements, it welcomed the Asian American students whose families moved in as the Lower East Side’s Italians moved up and out.

Nationwide, not all Catholic schools have adapted so well. The church’s educational system in the United States has suffered a sharp decline over the past three decades as Catholics have moved out of inner-city ethnic neighborhoods and been replaced by non-Catholics.

Parish schools are undergoing something of a rebirth in the 1990s, however, as parents and guardians of all races and religions seek affordable alternatives to public education systems.

In New York City, parents willing to spend about $2,000 a year in tuition can send their children to Catholic schools, whose reading and math scores are higher than those in the public schools and whose dropout rates are lower.

In 1965, there were more than 13,000 parochial schools in the United States. Today the number is barely 8,000. The total number of students has declined from 5.6 million to 2.6 million--and 13% of them are not Catholic.

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Here at St. Joseph’s, fewer than one-third of the students are Catholic. But that’s of scant consequence to the school, which has made its mark for seven decades by serving students from a community of immigrants who reached the Lower East Side with little more than the shirts on their backs.

About 20 of those students, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, plan to be on hand today when Pope John Paul II celebrates Mass in Central Park.

“For many children, this [school] is the only stability in their lives,” said Sister Marialice Ackermann, St. Joseph’s principal. “We offer a strong atmosphere with caring and understanding. Many of our children’s parents are working and they don’t come home until midnight. And for 90% of the student body, this is the only place they speak English.”

In Manhattan, where more than 80% of the students at both the city’s public and its parochial schools are of either Asian, Latino or African descent, 85% of parochial graduates go on to some form of higher education.

Citing these educational attainments, New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Guiliani recently called for New York’s famously troubled public school system to adopt many features of the parochial educational model. He said that the public system would improve if it embraced higher standards for both learning and discipline.

Catholic educators say that their achievements can be attributed, at least in part, to the values their schools impart. Religion classes are mandatory and pictures and statues of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary adorn all classrooms. Moreover, the schools enforce a level of discipline no longer in vogue in public schools.

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“We don’t even allow chewing gum and for kids that is a big deal,” said Charles Engel, principal at Our Lady of Sorrows, a Lower East Side parochial school where nearly 90% of the school’s 292 students are Latino. “Our rules, petty as they seem, remind children [that] they need to follow rules and that success is dependent on their behavior.”

Catholic educators are the first to admit that they owe some of their success to a self-selection process. Unlike public schools, they are not compelled to accept all comers. Tuition--coupled with an almost total lack of scholarships--discourages the poorest of the poor from seeking admission. And parents willing to pay tuition have a financial stake in how well their children learn, a situation not always present in public schools.

“The more involved the parents are in the education of their children, the better the child will do,” said Nora Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New York. “Children respond to the interests of a significant adult in their lives. I know this will sound crass, but these are people who put money down and they want to see that money expended well.”

The schools, in turn, make a significant effort to keep parents involved. At Our Lady of Sorrows, for example, parents are expected to initial homework assignment sheets daily, signaling their awareness of what their children are expected to learn.

It is not that these schools are problem-free. Money is a constant problem for Lower East Side schools; Our Lady of Sorrows lost 25 students this year because it raised tuition $15 a month.

In addition, schools in this neighborhood must combat the crime and drugs that plague the Lower East Side. St. Joseph’s is frequently hit by burglars--the school lost more than $3,000 worth of supplies and equipment in a September break-in--and the neighborhood is rife with gang activity.

One of the school’s attractions to parents, according to Ackermann, is its rooftop playground. Covered with Astroturf and surrounded by a fence, the area gives students a place to play games of chase high above their Manhattan neighborhood.

“Many children are sent here so they don’t have to play on the street but still get fresh air,” Ackermann observed. “If they aren’t careful, they could get involved with gangs very easily.”