The New York Times seems to be specializing in a new genre of news writing: The decline of the Roman Catholic school. Its most recent story comes from David Gonzalez, who crafts an opening that is equal parts heartbreaking and maddening as it focuses on the principal of St. Martin of Tours Elementary in the Bronx as she introduces the last kindergarten graduation the school will ever hold:  

“We are honored to have with us the future college graduates of ...” She paused, bit her lip and looked at the children. Her voice cracked. “Of ... 20 ... 27.”

Sister Nora praised them for learning about God, reading and respect.

“We look forward to hearing about the progress they make as they continue their educational journey ... elsewhere.”

She made it, barely. The “elsewhere” was the killer, as it has been since January, when Sister Nora was told the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York had decided St. Martin’s would close after 86 years. Pleas and plans to save the school were received and rejected. Wednesday was the school’s final day.

The latest closure follows a report this month by Samuel G. Freedman in the Times, which chronicled the final days of Rice High School in Harlem, where 98 percent of the student body was black or Hispanic and where every graduating senior went to college. "It ought to sound an alarm about a slow-motion crisis in American education," Freedman wrote.

From Samuel G. Freedman in The New York Times:

Amid the grandeur and permanence of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, they marched down the aisle in pairs, the graduating seniors of Rice High School in Harlem. They were the 70th commencement class in the school’s history, the latest to bear the venerable epithet of being “Rice men.”

All those trappings of longevity, the bronze doors and marble pulpit and stained glass, were illusory. The graduation ceremony on May 27 was the last ever for Rice, which is being closed, and the event was most significant as a symbol of the continuing contraction of Roman Catholic education in the urban settings where it has been most needed.

For two months, the leaders of Rice High School in Harlem, challenged by a six-figure operating deficit and a 44 percent enrollment decline over seven years, have searched for ways to keep the boys preparatory school open. This wasn't just another financially struggling Catholic school. This was a financially struggling Catholic school that sent every one of its graduating seniors to college, and the vast majority of those students came from impoverished households that required financial aid.

This week, Rice announced that it would close its doors for good in June after 73 years.