Gotham: Closing of Holy Spirit School Leaves Teachers Adrift

I sat last week in a hilly playground off University Avenue in the Bronx with Eloise Pescador Martinez, 58, and Richard DeZonie, 61. They have taught for three decades each at Holy Spirit School, down the street. ӀLong ago I came to the realization,Ԁ Mr. DeZonie said, Ӏthat I love that look in a childҀs eye when youҀve reached him.Ԁ

Ms. Martinez nodded, emphatic. ӀI love it!Ԁ she said. ӀWeҀre family, generation after generation of family.Ԁ

Their family is being torn asunder. In a few weeks, the Archdiocese of New York will shutter their school, 1 of 25 to close this year. Their children will be dispersed. A few veteran teachers will find toeholds in a shrinking Roman Catholic system. Many will be cut adrift, middle-aged wayfarers in a bad market. For their decades of modestly paid work, the diocese offers this parsimonious going-away gift: Teachers can choose a $5,000 severance check or six months of health coverage. Not both.

So which will it be? Ms. MartinezҀs daughter has asthma ׀ sheҀll opt for insurance. Mr. DeZonieҀs wife teaches at Holy Spirit as well; heҀll take the insurance and sheҀll take the money. ӀMan, itҀs not much after three decades, no it really isnҀt,Ԁ he said.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan projects a jovial official face of Catholicism in this city. He can crack a joke with practiced timing. At the recent conclave in Rome, where bishops and cardinals paraded about in glorious raiment, he was regarded as quite the comer.

Back home, the Catholic Church and the archdiocese give the appearance of an empire sunk in financial despondency. Church attendance and school enrollment has tumbled for decades.

Some of the financial problems are owing to the churchҀs own lies and omissions around the sexual abuse scandals involving priests.

Cardinal Dolan and his school superintendent, who declined to comment, twice cut the system close to the bone in recent years, eliminating nearly 60 schools. They have sold off and leased real estate, raising many millions of dollars.

The superintendent, Timothy J. McNiff, said recently that the diocesan schools were stable. ThereҀs a survivorҀs comfort to be had in that. But you wonder what becomes of those who have turned to the beacon that has been Holy Spirit, an elementary school that sits atop the bony spine of the Morris Heights neighborhood. Generational waves of immigrants, Italians and Irish, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, Mexicans and Ghanaians, have come through its doors.

The tuition at Holy Spirit is a pittance compared with a Dalton or a Brearley. And the archdiocese deserves credit for subsidizing these costs. But for a Ghanaian immigrant working two jobs and pulling down $25,000 a year, that tuition looms as a mountainous sum.

Any talk of subsidy, however, must include the teachers. A parochial school veteran with 20 years of service and a masterҀs degree makes $60,000; thatҀs a touch above the starting pay for a public-school teacher. Nor are parochial school pensions remotely comparable to those of public-school teachers.

ThatҀs O.K., sort of. Ms. Martinez, who first spoke to me one evening after choir practice, talked easily of their mission. But this is a city grown more expensive by the week, and the gap between the wealthy few and the middle-class many who scrape by gets wider.

Ms. Martinez is divorced and has twice dipped into her small retirement savings for her daughterҀs tuition. She sprints paycheck to paycheck. ӀI always said I didnҀt get into this for the money,Ԁ she said. ӀI guess I was right.Ԁ

Sacrifices are easiest when shared. No one likes to think of themselves as nave. Last time, the archdiocese said it had set aside $7.4 million for a Ӏteacher transition plan.Ԁ That was sophistry.

The diocese spent $600,000 on severance the last time it closed schools. It appears to have counted its payments into unemployment insurance to pad that package.

ӀIҀve told my landlord IҀm facing a layoff,Ԁ Ms. Martinez said. ӀI want to know: WhereҀs that Catholic mission we have lived with all of our lives?Ԁ

We walked back down University Boulevard toward the Romanesque tower of the school. We passed children, who smiled, waved and shouted out her name. ӀI try to separate my faith from the institution,Ԁ she said slowly. ӀMy faith now? ItҀs those children.Ԁ

E-mail: powellm@nytimes.com

Twitter: @powellnyt

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 6, 2013

The Gotham column on Tuesday, about teachers at Holy Spirit School, which is being closed at the end of the school year, misstated the name of a street near the elementary school in the Bronx. It is University Avenue (also known as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard), not University Boulevard.

View the original article here