Mother Teresa School
Both the Monmouth County Parks System and the borough of Atlantic Highlands are now waiting and hoping that the Catholic diocese of Trenton accepts their joint offer to purchase the closed Mother Teresa School and property.
Only time will tell if this coming together of the county and the borough to improve the area and provide recreational space for young and old alike will result in an agreement from the diocese and a move forward.
But it has already shown that all factions of the borough’s official body can and do come together with one voice and put politics aside for at least a little while. Seems like Mother Teresa can perform miracles.
Borough residents should be appreciative and thankful for that.
The borough has been negotiating with the diocese for four years now about the Mother Theresa property. Perhaps elections and the larger regionalization issue have helped put the acquisition on a back burner, so it is refreshing to see it active and apparently most viable now.
Mother Teresa School which was originally the very popular and great educational system of St. Agnes School, became a regional school when Our Lady of Perpetual Help, another great school system in Highlands, closed in 2006. Ten years later, declining enrollment due to higher tuition forced by higher costs, closed the Mother Teresa School. It has remained dormant since then, other than use by many of the church ministries, the Knights of Columbus and other units who have occasionally rented the building for their own purposes.
The diocese has tried a number of different means to keep Mother Teresa school open and active, either as a larger regional school or a consolidation of other schools. But times and the economy have closed so many Catholic schools recently…look at Mater Dei where so much was done in recent years to keep it open. Yet it still had to close. At the elementary school level, both Holy Family in Union Beach and St. Ann’s in Keansburg have also closed, in addition to OLPH.
While all this is happening, the Mother Teresa school building remains in need of repairs and renovations, improvements the diocese finds difficult to maintain or create because of the economy. Several experts in the building field have said it is too costly at this point to repair.
Whether that is true, or whether anything can happen to the school, depends on whether this joint offer by town and county to purchase the property is accepted. County officials indicate if purchased, the Mother Teresa school would not be demolished immediately. But the property and the adjacent Charles Hesse building could become active and alive.
There is no doubt the Hesse building, constructed 16 years ago, is already a vibrant part of the property because of both church activity and the church’s cooperation with the borough. It is used regularly as a polling place for borough wide election polling sites, for blood drives, and numerous fund raising activities. Basketball leagues and summer recreation programs are held there. Even the police department has used the building as well as the school itself for practices for emergency events or actions. The gym is often the site for dances, concerts, special informational meetings. It is indeed a heart of the community.
If the borough and county acquire the property, surely the Hesse building could still be used for church activities under a lease program with agreement by all. It could also be used for emergency situations where triage locations are necessary, a stable location given its distance from the bay and decreased possibility of flood damage. It seems a natural for both the borough and the county to stage recreational programs of all types in the building, another boon for local residents.
Monmouth County Parks has been working, it seems, with borough officials for several years to help all of this come about. Praise to the current and past council for listening and apparently working with them to come to an agreement of their own. Both Mayor Lori Hohenleitner and Councilman James Murphy have put aside their political differences to work together and enthusiastically approve the offer the council and county are making to the diocese. Councilman Jon Crowley has been working for a long time to have this accomplished and has built up considerable support for the borough/county union. He deserves praise as well for sticking with the issue even when it was placed on a back burner.
Everyone knows the excellence of the County Parks Department and its dedication to preserving open space and providing recreational and cultural activities for residents.
The ideas of subdividing the property or building houses or apartments were certainly not received well when presented to the public. Experts have given statistics and figures showing it would be too expensive to renovate the school for senior housing. Negotiations with the County have now resulted in a possible solution before it is too costly not only for residents but for Catholics in the Trenton Diocese.
Congratulations are certainly in order for the mayor and council who so unreservedly endorsed the offer all have agreed is equitable, fair and in their minds hopefully sufficient to have the diocese agree.
It is a giant step forward. It is a hopeful sign to see council working together. It is enticing to see Monmouth County want to invest so much in Atlantic Highlands.
The Parks system has offered a substantial cost agreement program, it appears, which will both enable both the county and the borough to make use of the building and the property for the benefit of the borough. Hopefully, this will be of benefit to the diocese and the parishioners of St. Agnes Church as well to the degree it can be moved forward.
Even those who don’t believe in prayer should hope for good fortune to fall on the diocese, the county parks system, borough council and residents.
The unified support of the entire council is a first positive step.
