Church downplays talk of independent school
Supporters of the Cardinal Gibbons School are asking the Archdiocese of Baltimore if they can rent the property and coninue operating the landmark institution as an independent Catholic high school. But the day after an auxiliary bishop said Monday that church officials would consider all options, the archdiocese splashed cold water on the idea.
Cardinal Gibbons is the only high school among the 13 schools the archdiocese is planning to close at the end of the academic year.
"The thought that the existing school community could raise the kind of money necessary to run the school is not realistic and not being considered," archdiocesan spokesman Sean Caine said Tuesday. To suggest that the archdiocese is taking that idea seriously "would just be giving people false hope. And that's not fair."
Alumnus Tom Grace said Bishop Denis J. Madden sent a different signal on Monday.
"We don't care what Sean Caine says," he said. "Bishop Madden has clearly left the door open. He has told us he will talk again with the archbishop and get back to us. We are taking the man at his word."
Asked at a meeting packed with hundreds of students, parents and alumni Monday if the archdiocese would allow Gibbons to "go independent and rent the buildings at a minimal cost to the Archdiocese of Baltimore," Madden said that "all kinds of options are being considered." The response drew a standing ovation from the crowd.
"The bishop gave us a glimmer of hope," David Brown, the school's principal, said Tuesday. "With that glimmer out there, several of our most prominent alumni are working on the idea of Cardinal Gibbons operating as an independent Catholic school. I think there is growing support for the idea."
