Less than a month ago, Preston High School in the Bronx seemed destined for an all-too- familiar fate: another urban Catholic school being forced to close because of financial distress and shrinking enrollment.
But to students, staff members and a large network of alumni, the closing did not make sense. Preston’s finances were in order and its enrollment was near capacity. So the school’s supporters, hoping to defy a decades-long trend, waged a campaign to save it.
On Tuesday, their efforts paid off.
Less than two months after administrators announced that Preston would close at the end of this school year, they reversed course under pressure from Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and other elected officials. The school’s two buildings will be sold to the Bally’s Corporation, which has promised to extend Preston’s lease.
After initially rejecting an offer from Bally’s to buy the property, in the Throgs Neck neighborhood, the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, the religious order that owns Preston, accepted the company’s offer of approximately $10 million. Bally’s has agreed to lease the buildings back to the school for 25 years at $1 a year.
“We are overjoyed that Preston will remain open for young women in the Bronx,” said Jackeline Stewart-Hawkins, a 2002 graduate who helped lead the campaign against the closing. “It’s beyond a school. It’s about the future of the Bronx, New York and even the country, because these are our future leaders.”
The agreement means that Preston will avoid the fate of other prestigious Catholic schools in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, including Tollentine, Rice, St. Barnabas and All Hallows, which have either closed or plan to.
The school will eventually be disassociated from the Sisters of the Divine Compassion and will seek the sponsorship of another Catholic group.
The deal came together two weeks after Ms. James convened a hearing and opened an inquiry into the decision to close the school. Other public officials who championed the effort to save the school included Amanda Farías, a Preston graduate who is the New York City Council’s majority leader, Kristy Marmorato, a Bronx City Council member, and the Bronx borough president, Vanessa Gibson.
“Preston High School is a pillar of the Bronx community that has educated generations of young women,” Ms. James said in a statement, “and today I am proud to announce that the school will stay open for years to come.”
Of the $10 million sale price, $8.5 million will go to the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, who will also receive about $600,000 for the order’s legal costs; $1 million is earmarked for capital improvements. Bally’s, which is seeking a license to open a casino in New York, is also giving the school an option to buy the buildings for the same price it paid, adjusted for inflation.
Soo Kim, the Bally’s chairman, said in an interview that the deal was a gesture of good will and that there were no legal strings attached related to the company’s pursuit of a casino license. He said Bally’s was not interested in any role running the school.
“The school is not tied to the license, and there’s no quid pro quo,” he said. “It’s just a way to show we care about the Bronx.”
The Sisters of Divine Compassion opened Preston, whose best-known graduate may be Jennifer Lopez (1987), in 1947. The order said the current average age of its members is 83 and that they could no longer run a school or be landlords.
Soon after the order announced that the buildings were for sale, Bally’s made an offer that was almost identical to the agreement announced on Tuesday. But the order cut off talks last month and said the school would close after all.
Preston students, their families, staff members and alumni organized and staged protests. Amid the clamor, Ms. James convened the hearing, which about 500 people attended, an overwhelming majority of them opposed to the school’s closing.
“When we began this, there were a lot of people who had fought for their schools and lost,” Ms. Farías said in an interview on Tuesday. “We heard that we probably would not win, either. So, I’m really hopeful, because we need more institutions like this, especially for young women of color.”
David Waldstein writes about the greater New York region with an emphasis on sports.
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