GALVESTON — O’Connell College Preparatory School is in a “state of trouble,” principal Patrick Danesi said Thursday, and it will need a heap of cash to get through the school year.
The county’s only Catholic high school lost 14 students and $98,000 in tuition after Hurricane Ike roared ashore Sept. 13, flooding 75 percent of the island and damaging the houses of 78 of the school’s families.
Some financially strapped families have been unable to pay tuition, shorting the school $50,000 in revenue during three months, Danesi told a crowded cafeteria of parents and students. Some charitable organizations, which the school relied on to provide grants, rejected the school’s request this year in favor of helping Hurricane Ike victims instead.
The loss of tuition revenue and financial help in the aftermath of a hurricane that damaged the school’s library, gym and school building is straining the school’s finances, so much so, that the school has already taken out loans to pay one month’s payroll.
“We’ve trimmed down to the bare bones,” Danesi said.
The school has eliminated positions, changed full-time teachers to part time and consolidated classes to trim personnel costs.
The school was $20,000 short last month in paying payroll, which costs the school $56,000 a month, Danesi said.
Danesi, in an effort to reduce utility costs, sometimes switches off the hallway lights during the day and shuts off the air-conditioning, if possible.
“It’s like O’Connell in the 1920s,” Danesi joked.
Still, the school is hurting for cash.
Danesi and Alex Gonzalez, board president, said they’ve identified benefactors, whom they weren’t ready to name, who agreed to boost the school’s finances with a $200,000 grant, if the school would match the grant and present a two-year plan.
Funds are needed, in the long-term, to pay for at least $500,000 worth of storm repairs to the largely underinsured buildings.
The school, which leases the building at 1320 23rd St. from the diocese, will be responsible for repairing the hurricane damage.
Board members will provide a clearer picture of the school’s financial shape at a board meeting Wednesday, Gonzalez said.
In the meantime though, the school will need help just paying the bills and payroll.
“We don’t want Dec. 31 to be our last day, and it won’t be our last day if we get together and make things happen,” Danesi said. “We’ll get through this time because this place is too special to let go.”
Parents on Thursday overwhelmingly agreed to help raise money.
Teachers, flipping through an alumni book, started calling 1,200 former students to solicit donations.
This time, O’Connell College Preparatory School will have time to work to keep the school afloat, Gonzalez said, unlike four years ago when the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston announced it would pull financial support for the school, leaving school leaders scrambling to figure out a way to operate independently of the diocese.
Today, the school’s revenue base is tuition and grants — both which are lacking after Hurricane Ike — so the school needs to find other resources to operate, Danesi said.
Kate Holzhauser’s child moved to O’Connell College Preparatory School in fall 2008, after the diocese shuttered Mt. Carmel High School in Houston in the spring.
She thanked the administrators and board members for being honest about the school’s financial shape and urged parents to step up to keep the school afloat.
“The only one who can solve this problem is us,” she said.
