Florida Catholic | ‘We left our hearts here’

‘We left our hearts here’

After 46 years of serving neighborhood children, St. Monica School holds last graduation.

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Published: 06.06.08

Quincie Doucet Barron rejoices with friends after receiving her eighth–grade graduation diploma. She is a member of the Class of 2008, the last to graduate from St. Monica School, which is closing at the end of this school year.
ANA RODRIGUEZ–SOTO | FC

MIAMI GARDENS | Pomp and circumstance mixed with sadness May 30 as St. Monica School celebrated its last graduation ceremony.

The archdiocese announced in February that the school, which opened in 1962, will close at the end of this year due to dwindling enrollment and ongoing financial difficulties.

The 2008 graduating class consisted of 22 students. Total enrollment from kindergarten through eighth grade was 195. The announcement said the archdiocese had poured $2.7 million in subsidies into the school during the last seven years.

“It’s a shame because the neighborhood needs this place,” said Marian Hunker, who taught at St. Monica from 1994 to 2004, and made a point of attending the last graduation.

“We left part of our hearts here,” said Hunker, speaking for herself and another former teacher, Donna Gallivan, who accompanied her to the graduation.

Both now teach at St. Gregory School in Plantation. They said news of the closing was sad but not surprising.

ANA RODRIGUEZ–SOTO | FC
“It’s very sad because here we were doing a mission that had lasted all these years,” said Maglorie Denbow, a 27–year veteran teacher at St. Monica School.

“From the day I was originally hired, the principal told me, ‘The school is going to close. Don’t be surprised if, when you come back in August, you don’t have a job,” said Gallivan, who taught at St. Monica from 1996 to 2005.

Nevertheless, the closing will leave a huge void in the neighborhood, Gallivan said. “So many of these kids are neighborhood kids. They may not be Catholic but they live in the neighborhood.”

Gabriel Lesane, a member of the 2008 graduating class, has attended St. Monica since third grade and will enter nearby Msgr. Edward Pace High School in the fall. He is Baptist but he said that did not matter at St. Monica.

“They taught us to be spiritual. They’ll always be family.”

Marie Joachim, who attends a Pentecostal church, said, “I’m still going to miss the school,” even though her only daughter, Stacy Napoleon, graduated this year. Stacy attended St. Monica since second grade and would attend Pace if her mother could afford it.

“I would like to have a better education for my daughter. I’m not Catholic but I like Catholic school for her. This is the best,” said Joachim, who recalls attending Catholic school herself when she was a child in Haiti.

She said total strangers compliment her on the way her daughter behaves and carries herself, and she attributes that to the education and personal attention she received at St. Monica. The $300-a-month tuition also made it affordable.

“They think when you send your child to private school you have money. You don’t have money. You’re just looking for something (better) for your child,” Joachim said.

“Yes, we’re a small school. Yes, we struggled with money. Yes, we did a lot of fundraising along the way,” said Maglorie Denbow. But other archdiocesan schools are in similar straits and have not shut down.

“We didn’t have that chance” to save the school, said Denbow, who has taught at St. Monica since 1979 and whose two children graduated from there. “It’s very sad because here we were doing a mission that had lasted all these years.”

Denbow and other current and former teachers summed up their attraction to the school this way: They came, they saw, they fell in love with the children.

“The teachers who came here, they knew it was a mission,” Denbow said. “It’s not for the money. It’s for the kids. We fell in love with the kids and we continued working with them.”

“As modest as our school is, we give 150 percent to all of our children on a daily basis,” said Christine Gonzalez, principal, during her address to the graduating class.

Gonzalez taught at St. Monica for seven years before becoming principal this year. She said enrollment peaked at 325 in 2003. Since then, the school has been buffeted by physical damage from the recent spate of hurricanes as well as a reduction in students attending with the help of state-funded McKay scholarships.

She said a few of St. Monica’s teachers have found jobs in other Catholic schools next year. She has been hired as principal at St. Bartholomew School in Miramar. About 10 percent of the students will be attending other Catholic schools.

“Tuition is the first problem. The second problem is closeness to home,” Gonzalez said.

“I hope wherever they go, they are touched spiritually, not just academically,” Denbow said. “Because that is what we did here.”

Although the school is closing, the archdiocese will continue to serve the neighborhood in a different way. Catholic Health Services has obtained permission to build an apartment complex for low-income elderly on the site.

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