By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
WEST SIDE MANHATTAN -- The last Catholic school on the West Side has just held graduation ceremonies, but the joyousness of the occasion was tempered by the fact that it marked the end of the 136 year-old institution, the New York Times reported.
St. Michael's, the all-girl Roman Catholic high school on West 32nd St., was known for taking in students who had been rejected by other schools for poor grades or bad behavior. On average, nearly three-quarters of the troubled students graduated with state-certified Regents diplomas.
For the 200 students, some of whom played on one of America's best girls' basketball teams, the news was met with bitterness and sorrow.
"I had a dozen girls who all they knew in their life was disappointment until they became one of the top 10 teams in the country -- and now the rug was pulled out from under them," Apache Pascal, the coach who saw the girls' team to a 2009 championship, told the Times. "It was so horrible, I can't even explain it."
Assistant principal Michael Duff recalls the girls crying "like it was the end of the world," he told the Times.
St. Michael's is only one school out of the dozens that the Archdiocese has closed in the past few years. Officials attributed the school's rising costs and falling enrollment to "changing demographics," the Times reports.
Some 50 years ago, 900 students regularly filled the school, each paying full tuition. By contrast, 80 percent of this year's student body came from impoverished families.
Parents would do odd jobs such as scrubbing floors in order to meet the monthly $600 fee, St. Michael's officials told the Times. Now, many feel like they've been dealt an unfair hand.
"I went to parents' meetings, and never once did anyone tell us that we should try to raise money, try to recruit more kids to come to school," Carmen Ruiz, a mother of an 11th grader told the Times.
