The Tablet Staff
BAY RIDGE — St. Anselm Catholic Academy and Holy Angels Catholic Academy will merge to form Bay Ridge Catholic Academy, the Diocese of Brooklyn announced on Oct. 31.
The new school will open next September for the 2020-21 academic year at St. Anselm’s building.
Enrollment has fallen steeply at Holy Angels Catholic Academy, going from 213 students in grades K-8 in the 2016-17 academic year to 121 now, a diocesan official said. At St. Anselm’s, enrollment reached a low point in 2015-2016 at 210 students. It is now up to 244 students.
John Quaglione, chairman of St. Anselm’s board, said Bay Ridge Catholic Academy expects to open with 325-350 students, a level he said will make the school sustainable.
Holy Angels Catholic Academy was formed in 2009 out of the parish elementary school for Our Lady of Angels Parish, when governance of the school was placed under a lay board of directors. It is located about nine blocks, or half a mile, from St. Anselm’s, which switched to lay goverance in 2011.
Both parish schools were founded in the 1920s.
Other schools that have announced closings or mergers in the past year:
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St. Francis Xavier-Queen of All Saints Catholic Academy to Close
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Three Brooklyn Diocese Schools Slated to Close, Two Will Merge