At St. Malachy: Facing reality

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC MIAMI BUREAU EDITOR

Posted: 07.01.09

TAMARAC | Father Dominick O’Dwyer said he faced “no big protests or upheaval” when he made the decision to close St. Malachy School earlier this year.

“People are disappointed, of course. I was the No. 1 to be disappointed,” said St. Malachy’s pastor. “But reality is reality and we have to face it.”

His school, with an enrollment of 109 students in pre-k through eighth grade, needed a $200,000 annual subsidy to survive. “I couldn’t put that on the parish.”

Earlier this year, he started a campaign to increase enrollment, to see “if we couldn’t get enough students to at least break even. That didn’t happen,” said Father O’Dwyer. “The numbers weren’t coming in.”

He noted that enrollment at St. Malachy, which opened in 1984, began declining when All Saints in Sunrise and Mary Help of Christians in Parkland opened their own schools.

“We lost a lot of students because they were coming from that area,” Father O’Dwyer said, pointing out that Tamarac’s population today is mostly retirees, as younger families have moved to suburbs farther west.

He added that most of St. Malachy’s current students will be staying in the Charter School of Excellence which will open there this fall. And the parish will be offering religious education classes when the regular school day ends.

“That’s what parents were very happy to hear, that we were going to have the religious education after school hours,” Father O’Dwyer said. “It’ll work out OK. I’m sure it will.”

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