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Compared to national trends Upper Peninsula Catholic schools are doing just fine. The Associated Press ran an article last week touting the eye-popping drop in Catholic school enrollment across the country. The total student body fell by 6.4%, the worst one-year decline in at least 50 years. Superintendent at the Diocese of Marquette Mark Salisbury says the drop across the UP is 45 kids in grades K-8, around five percent. That number is from the beginning of the year. Salisbury says new students have been trickling in since.
Salisbury says that conversations he has had with other Michigan officials suggests that relative strength is statewide. In the right circumstances, enrollment has surged at individual locations. Some sites in cities where public schools remain closed to in-person instruction have seen numbers boom, to the tune of an additional 100 students compared to a year ago.
Salisbury says it takes a lot of work to maintain the Catholic school system, but it has benefits that reach well into the future.
The numbers confirm what Father Ben Hasse of St. Albert the Great told Keweenaw Report last week. Young adults are not walking away from the church to the extent popularly believed.
