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Desperate times call for desperate measures. While Ss. John Neumann and Maria Goretti High School, 1736 S. 10th St., isn’t necessarily desperate, it’s close. Enter Bruce Robinson, a 59-year-old businessman without much background in education, who is pulling out all kinds of tricks to turn the once-thriving East Passyunk Crossing educational institution into a desirable school to which any South Philadelphia parent would want to send a child.
“The school has experienced a steep decline in enrollment over the last decade, and it’s not only Neumann-Goretti, but many of the Archdiocese schools have been in decline,” Robinson said. “We need to figure out how to stabilize enrollment and make this school vibrant again.”
When the all-male Neumann, formerly 2600 Moore St., merged with the all-female Goretti at the latter’s location in 2004, the enrollment was around 1,300.
“We’re down to about 500 students now,” Robinson confirmed.
Neumann was founded in 1934 as Southeast Catholic and Goretti in ’55 – they’re both treasured institutions in South Philly, schools where generations of South Philadelphians matriculated. But charter schools, Archdiocesan disarray and neighborhood demographics have weakened the combined school’s reputation as a thriving school.
Robinson took the reins last September and even converted to Roman Catholicism a couple months later with an expedited adult confirmation process. In the months since he moved into the head honcho office, he’s taken an aggressive approach to converting Neumann-Goretti into a world-class college preparatory academy.
“College classes, SAT prep courses for juniors and PSAT prep integrated into the curriculum, an internship program where students can get work and life experience with major Center City corporations and some tuition-assistance while doing that,” Robinson listed as some of his immediate tweaks.
Beginning next fall, administrators will add college prep and honors courses and when he began, the school offered five AP courses; they already offer 21.
“We want to be a premiere coed college prep school. We’ve taken a very proactive approach to initiate change, and we’ve gotten support from the Archdiocse to do that,” Robinson said.
What about money? How can he afford all these grand changes? It seems the short answer is support from Faith in the Future, a private nonprofit that the Catholic Church hired to handle its high schools for five years. The organization fundraises millions annually and gets healthy contributions from the Philadelphia School Partnership, which has distributed $35 million to parochial, charter and traditional public schools. Robinson may need as much as $1 million to initiate all the changes he wants to maintain and further next year: training teachers in SAT prep; recruiting professors to teach college-level courses at the school; outfitting students with modern technology; and instituting a rather progressive idea for a technology and entrepreneurship lab.
“The other thing that we’re looking to do is to create a magnet school situation for innovation and entrepreneurship. What we’re going to do is offer more dynamic electives where kids can have an opportunity to be their own boss and add courses along that line,” Robinson explained. “You could be interested in the food service industry field and may say ‘Hey, I want to create something where I market a product or run a restaurant’ – you need to know finances and write a business plan and negotiate and know legal documents.”
Three years ago, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced that it would close four of its 17 high schools and close or merge 46 out of 156 elementary schools. On a larger scale, in 1961 approximately 250,000 Philly-area students were enrolled in parochial schools; it’s down to closer to 57,500 now. Charter schools have something to do with that.
“We’re looking to add more rigor to our entire curriculum and not just by eliminating [splitting students into divisions of success] but throughout the entire school. We want to make it easy for people when they’re choosing a high school to understand exactly who we are and what we stand for,” the Drexel University business administration alum said. “What we have to focus on is not only kids going to college but kids flourishing in college.”
The Neumann-Goretti tuition hovers around $7,500 to $8,000, and the school attracts families of all faiths and backgrounds.
“We’re diverse ethnically, religiously, we’re equally male and female – I think that’s one of our strengths.”
Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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