On Sept. 4, for the first time in 169 years, Visitation Academy in Bay Ridge was quiet on the first day of classes. The school permanently closed its doors last summer, with the monastery soon to follow.
Generations of alumni attended a Thanksgiving service and toured the property one last time on Sept. 7, where they swapped stories, reunited with former teachers and friends, and bid farewell to the school.
Samantha Russo — who noted she was Samantha Murphy when she attended Visitation Academy as a child — was thrilled to run into her old second-grade teacher as she strolled the grounds.
“I had a great childhood growing up here,” she said.
Her favorite part, she said, was graduating from eighth grade with the same 18 classmates she started kindergarten with.
“I have just the best memories here of being safe and loved, it was just a wonderful experience,” she said. “I feel sorry for the people that never had this experience, and now they never will.”
Visitation Monastery, which oversaw the school, had only two sisters remaining as of the start of 2024. In February, the sisters decided they would “leave our home here and end our ministry and sponsorship of Visitation Academy,” they said in a letter to families in February.
Families, faculty, and the school’s Board of Trustees had tried to find a way to keep the school open, they said, but could not find a path forward. Parents and students were frustrated with the announcement, and said rumors that the property would be sold had been swirling for months.
Zoe Koutsoupakis, whose daughter Paula attended the school, wondered on Saturday what would come of the property. Answers have not materialized months later, and the monastery is still open for the time being, though the school building is closed. John Quaglione, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Diocese, said he did not know when the monastery would be closing its doors.
“It’s all about foundation, education, and respect, and this school gave my daughter everything,” Koutsoupakis said.
A number of former Visitation Academy students are now enrolled at a new middle school at Fontbonne Hall Academy, The Visitation Program. Effie Maldari, a Visitation alumna who said her two nieces attended the school years after she and her own sisters graduated, now works at Fontbonne, and said she was “very proud” to have welcomed Visitation students.
Visitation Academy wasn’t the only Catholic school in Brooklyn to close this year. In May, the diocese announced it would close two others due to falling enrollment and financial issues: Salve Regina Catholic Academy and St. Catherine of Genoa-St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Academy.
