Officials representing the Sisters of the Divine Compassion say financial issues common in recent years to Catholic religious orders forced the group to put its Good Counsel campus in White Plains up for sale.
Geoff Thompson, a spokesman for the order, told the Business Journal the combination of the congregation”™s nuns aging and fewer young women joining the order have put the congregation in economic peril. After examining potential solutions over the past 15 years, the sisters decided to sell the 16-acre property on North Broadway, which includes an elementary school and a high school, Thompson said.
“They started looking at options back in 2000, and a lot of actuarial work was done,” Thompson said. As the sisters received and evaluated the actuarial data, they realized their economic situation was unsustainable, he said.
In a letter sent to parents of students at the schools on Nov. 14, Sister Carol Wagner, president of the order, said operating the Good Counsel campus costs the order more than $600,000 each year, which has been depleting the congregation”™s savings.
“Through the sale of the campus, we will be in a financial position to ensure that our sisters can be properly and adequately cared for,” Wagner wrote. “Within a few years, a very small number of sisters will be left to support a large number of sisters ranging in age from 75 to 95 years old.”
Wagner said in the letter that the sisters do not have the money to make capital investments in the campus, which has an aging infrastructure and costs $1.7 million annually to operate. In a question-and-answer piece sent with the letter, Wagner noted the average age of the 81 sisters is 77 ”“ with six sisters over the age of 90, 23 in their 80s and 40 in their 70s.
Wagner wrote that the school”™s administration knew of the financial situation over a decade ago and knew that it was not a viable situation in the long term.
“This did not crop up overnight. The administration of the schools knew, and the principals certainly knew,” Thompson said when asked about parents saying they were blindsided with the news of the campus sale. “I”™m sure for some of the parents, this came as a shock, and it probably could have been handled better.”
According to both Wagner”™s letter and Thompson, attempts to raise funds were made but ultimately were insufficient.
“All of the properties owned by the sisters were thoroughly evaluated,” Thompson said. “The property that is the most costly to operate and holds the most value is the Good Counsel campus, and that”™s why it is on the market.”
The letter sent by Wagner emphasized that the disposition of the campus is a complex matter.
Commercial real estate firm CBRE Group Inc. has the exclusive listing of the Good Counsel campus. Bill Cuddy, an executive vice president at CBRE, declined to comment on any bids that have been made on the property.
At a rally outside the Good Counsel Campus gates Nov. 19, parents and students voiced support for the Good Counsel schools and expressed concern about how the Sisters of the Divine Compassion were handling the sale of the campus.
“There was a recent bid, we found out, from a church group that wanted to save the property, have the nuns stay here and keep the schools,” said Jennifer Lewis, who is part of a group of parents that formed a corporation trying to preserve the schools. Save the Good Counsel Community Now Inc. was incorporated last month as a not-for-profit entity. “(Members of the religious group bidding on the property) were willing to work with our group, but the nuns shut it down.”
Representing the sisters, Thompson also declined to comment on any specific bids or bidders.
“There are a seemingly endless number of rumors about this,” Thompson said. “This is a very emotional situation for parents and students, not to mention the sisters who have been there for 125 years. It would be better for both sides to work together and find options for the school that are not on the Good Counsel campus.”
Leif needs to check his facts by actually interviewing people who work at the school daily. This plan was never verbalized to any of the faculty or staff and was dropped, like a bomb, in our laps. I believe the Sisters are being mislead by their “advisors” who are mesmerizing them with fantasy scenarios, hence the suddenness and inflexibility of the decision making process. BTW: The school is not under enrolled, is not having trouble paying its bills and still have potential students visiting for fall 2015 despite the media chaos. Shame on everybody who tries to take advantage of the situation.
Leif, I would love to speak to you about this matter. Mr. Thimpson’s comments are very one sided and don’t represent the entire story as understood by the parents. I am a parent of a sophomore and an alum. I am also a parent who reached out to the leadership team and spent six weeks negotiating with Sr. Lauren McLeod of the leadership team to have a meeting with a small group of parents, the school principal and President of the Board of Trustees to answer questions and to investigate how the leadership team planned on helping he school survive. They were given a list of parents names attending which the principal helped select ahead of time. They were given six questions we wanted to focus on ahead of time. AND, they cancelled 48 hrs before the meeting because they did not like the content of the questions. I would be more than happy to share the questions with you. The problem is that you are only being told their side. There are conflicting stories from all side. AND, Sr. Carol continues to act as if she has nothing to do with the school. She is technically the leader of the high school. Nothing can be done without her. I am not sure at what point it became the congregation and the schools so separate. The purpose of the meeting was to have questions answered and to see if we could working together resolve this problem in the most positive way for all involved. Finally, the leadership team continues to assert that they are helping the administration look for alternatives for the school when in fact according to the administration they have never offered a solution other than to close. I would think since the mission of the RDC is to educate young woman, they would offer possible alternative solutions to help the school survive since it has been taking such huge strides in a positive direction over the last four years, I.e., enrollment is up 30%, the school pays $100,000 dollars more in rent this year than they did 4 yrs ago. This could have been solved if the leadership team had given us a chance. That was never an alternative for them. Again, would love to speak with you. You can reach me at the above email address. Thank you.
To clarify, the meeting I was negotiating was with everyone stated above and the leadership team.
Check again, Mr. Thompson. Preston High School on the waterfront in the Bronx is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. What has more real estate advantage than waterfront property. Then there is the house in the Hamptons. And three homes in White Plains. This is more than a piece of real estate. It is the place where the Religious Sisters of the Divine Compassion were founded 125 years ago by a woman who cared for the street urchins of New York and brought them to White Plains for a better life, where they were trained to have skills to make a proper living. This is one of the very few religious orders founded by an American woman when women did not even have the right to vote. It is on the Historic Land Register of the United States. It is sacred ground. The chapel has a burial crypt where Mother Mary Veronica and her mentor, Monsignor Preston are buried as well as the original sisters and many of the original supporters of her cause. There is no communication because Carol Wagner will not speak. This sale requires the approval of a vote by all the sisters. The constitution of the order says the property should never be sold. And, basically,you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Why should these elderly, dedicated women be abolished from the home of their total adult life? You talk a good story as long as you eliminate most of the facts. There’s more
to this than closing a school. You are burying a piece of history of the City of White Plains, County of Westchester, State of NY and the U.S.A. I know you are the “Big Whig” of Westchester County Public Relations,but you need to respect and speak with those of us who have been around when you were just a twinkle in God’s eye! Thousands of people in Westchester County were educated by the Sisters of the Divine Compassion when they taught — free– by the way, the youth of this County. Would you tell your mother she has to leave her home in three months, find another place to live and offer her $2,000 a month to do so, suggesting she might find low income housing? Don’t just talk the talk…walk the walk…
Sounds exactly like what’s going on with us at Nazareth Montessori in New York City. These advisors come in, misrepresent the financial situation, sell the Sisters on closing, and then do a surprise announcement to the staff and parents. All requests to work together to solve the problem are ignored, because the goal was always to cash out on the real estate.