Coalition forms to fight closing of Our Lady of Mercy Academy in Syosset

A group of parents and alumnae of one of the last remaining all-girls Catholic high schools on Long Island says it is stepping up its fight to stop the institution from closing.

Just over a week after the nearly century-old Our Lady of Mercy Academy in Syosset announced it will close in June, the group said it formed a nonprofit to lead the effort to keep the school alive.

The group has been joined by the school’s athletic director, who resigned her position to work full-time on the effort, said Jeanette Miller, leader of the new organization, called the OLMA Preservation Coalition Inc.

“If there is any way that we can turn this around, we need to be a unified coalition,” Miller said. “We can’t be an angry mob. We need to be a serious constituency that the Sisters of Mercy can sit down with to have a conversation to potentially present a proposal to turn it around.”

Within about 12 hours of sending out a news release announcing the formation of the nonprofit, nearly 500 alumnae, parents of students and other supporters had signed up to volunteer on committees, she said.

“The coalition is fired up,” Miller said.

A Change.org petition that Miller started and which partially led to the formation of the nonprofit has garnered about 7,400 signatures.

The Sisters of Mercy say they closed the school because of declining enrollment, and that the decision is final.

“The vote and approval of closure is final and will not be reconsidered,” Sister Lisa Griffith of the Sisters of Mercy said in an email on Thursday. “We will not engage in discussions about emergency fundraising to reverse these decisions.”

Enrollment at Mercy Academy fell from about 100 students in each grade less than a decade ago to 37 in this year’s freshman class, school officials said. In the previous five years, class sizes ranged from 70 to 55.

Miller and other parents contend the school was mismanaged, especially since all other Catholic high schools on Long Island are stable or thriving, according to school officials. Mercy Academy officials and the Sisters of Mercy did not respond to a request to comment on that assertion.

Last week, the academy said in a statement that “this difficult decision was made because of changing demographics and lower enrollment, which has decreased by 45 percent in the past ten years.” 

The closing of Mercy Academy would leave Long Island with just one all-girls Catholic high school, Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead. The Island is also home to one all-boys Catholic high school, Chaminade in Mineola.

Dawn Cerrone, the school's athletic director, who quit Monday to work full time with the coalition, said Thursday that she has seen firsthand how the school transforms girls. It opened in 1928 on a bucolic 96-acre campus.

“I see girls come in as timid, shy, quiet freshmen and develop into these intelligently strong, confident, brave young ladies that go out into the world and do absolutely amazing things,” said Cerrone, who first coached at the school in the mid-1990s.

Working to keep it open “is a commitment in my heart and soul,” she said. “I feel it is part of my faith-based mission as a Catholic to do everything in my power to help this coalition, this group of amazing people, sustain this institution forever.”