Washington, DC
SPRINGFIELD – The economics, including $29 million in federal disaster recovery funding, always favored building a Catholic high school on the former Cathedral High School site, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal said Friday following Bishop Mitchell Rozanski’s announcement that Surrey Road would indeed be the site for the new Pope Francis High School.
Neal, D-Springfield, sent his children to the old Cathedral High School, and once taught there. As a federal lawmaker, he helped secure the Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for the Surrey Road site following the 2011 tornado.
FEMA officials have told The Republican the funds could be used for another location as long as the site was appropriate.
Neal also lobbied hard for the a new high school on the Surrey Road site in Springfield’s East Forest Park neighborhood.
“There are no winners and losers here,” Neal said. “The job now is to take two great traditions: Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic, and meld them into one great community.”
Here, you had a neighborhood that wanted the high school back.
Cathedral High School has 30,000 living alumni, he said.
Success also hinges on creating a large endowment for the new high school to offset tuition and make attending Pope Francis affordable. Science and technology should also be a focus, Neal said. Public high schools, including those in Springfield, have upgraded science labs in recent years. Pope Francis must compete.
And Surrey Road is the place to do it, he said.
Building schools, especially high schools, in residential neighborhoods can be hard, he said. Neighbors resist the noise and traffic.
“Here, you had a neighborhood that wanted the high school back,” Neal said. “Because the Cathedral family had been a good neighbor over the years.”
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