Jersey City losing another Catholic elementary school in June: Our Lady of Mercy Academy

Our Lady of Mercy Academy in Jersey City will close after this school year due to dwindling enrollment, ending half a century of providing a Catholic education to elementary school children. “This is a situation where the pastor and principal, working with the school office, recognized that they just could not continue without an excessive increase in tuition,” Archdiocese of Newark spokesman Jim Goodness said yesterday.

Goodness said the Archdiocese and the parish could not provide the financial support needed to keep the school open, but the church, located beside the school at 40 Sullivan Drive, will remain open and is stable. The school was founded in 1964 and teaches pre-K to eighth grade.

There were 552 students attending kindergarten to eighth grade in the 1999-2000 school year, but the number has dwindled to 165 this year, said Br. Ralph Darmento, deputy superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese.

“They think they are a jinx,” Edgar Jarencio said of her two 12-year-old granddaughters, who enrolled at OLM four years ago when their previous school closed. “We didn’t expect this to happen.

Jarencio said tuition for his granddaughters totaled about $8,000 a year. He will find another Catholic school for them to attend, saying: “I want them to have a Catholic environment. It’s better than the public schools.”

“I like the school because of the teachers and my friends,” said 8-year-old Jake Cordon, who was being picked up by his mother, Bernadette Cordon.

Bernadette Cordon said her older son attended OLM and is now a senior at St. Peter’s Prep, and her daughter attended the school and is now studying at the School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University.

“Both got a very good foundation here and a safe environment,” Cordon said.

Goodness said the decline in the number of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese has been “gradual, but significant.” Of the 140 elementary schools in the Archdiocese 14 years ago, only 75 remain.

Parents have been invited to the school early next week to meet representatives of other area Catholic elementary schools in order to facilitate the transition, Goodness said.

“It’s a good school and we are sad it’s closing,” said Fred Ongaya while picking up his 6-year-old daughter, Megan.

In February, the Archdiocese announced that Resurrection School in Jersey City will close at the end of this school year. With the closing of the two schools, Jersey City will be left with five Catholic grammar schools St. Nicholas, St. Joseph, Sacred Heart, St. Aloysius and Our Lady of Czestochowa.

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