If you don’t recognize what’s happening in the picture on the left, you aren’t alone. Catholic education isn’t what it used to be.

But with so many Catholic schools struggling — and fighting to stay open — an experiment in Boston caught my attention, courtesy this piece in the Boston Globe:

The Rev. James Flavin no longer has to replace lightbulbs or fix toilets at St. Edward’s School in Brockton, or scramble to raise funds to keep the school going. The small school building behind St. Edith Stein Church is now part of a regional school — Trinity Catholic Academy — which is heralding a new approach to Catholic elementary education in the Archdiocese of Boston.

The academy is benefiting from a $12 million renovation and expansion project this summer. From now on, work crews will handle building maintenance and education professionals will manage school budgets.

Schoolchildren will have computers and lab rooms, and they can eat lunch in a cafeteria rather than at their desks.

“We’ve never had such a thing,” said Flavin, pastor of St. Edith Stein parish, who ran St. Edward’s School. “For a Catholic school, that’s amazing.”

Three Catholic schools in Brockton — St. Edward’s, Sacred Heart, and St. Casimir, all of which were struggling financially and badly in need of repairs — have been reorganized into the larger regional school with two campuses that will serve students from throughout the area. The school will have the resources of a public school, with the discipline of the Catholic community, officials say.

“It’s Catholic education on steroids,” said the Rev. David O’Donnell, pastor of Christ the King Church, who oversaw Sacred Heart School. “This is going to be a top-notch entity for people on all angles.”

Trinity Catholic Academy is set to open Sept. 10, and its slogan, “A New Catholic School, A New Vision,” explains the regional school’s mission in remodeling Catholic education.

The reorganization is the first to occur under the Archdiocese of Boston’s 2010 Initiative — a strategy to reshape Catholic elementary schools into regional schools with more resources and new curriculum. Community leaders in Dorchester are studying ways to incorporate the model there, and other communities have expressed interest.

A task force of area religious, business, and education leaders and led by Jack Connors Jr., chairman emeritus of the advertising firm Hill, Holliday, has called on all Catholic communities to reexamine the old system of schools attached to churches.

Church officials said that the days have passed when parish communities can provide students and resources for their own schools. Parishioners have moved to the suburbs where their children often attend public schools. Local churches and families can’t keep up with the rising costs of education or afford repairs to school buildings.

The numbers of students attending Catholic schools tell the tale. In the 1960s, the archdiocese had some 150,000 students in its school system. Now there are just 50,000. The archdiocese oversaw 127 elementary schools in 2002; this fall it will have 100 schools.

In some ways, the push to close and consolidate Catholic schools is reminiscent of the archdiocesan campaign several years ago that shuttered dozens of churches due to a lack of priests and a drop in the number of church-going Catholics and parish revenue. The reconfiguration effort caused bitterness in several quarters.

But the 2010 Initiative is seen by those involved as a positive move — one that would strengthen education, rather than take anything away.

People felt like they lost something when reconfiguration occurred, said Terrence Donilon, spokesman for the archdiocese. But, the new school initiative “is about building something,” he said.

It is will be interesting to see how it works up in Boston, and if it can be replicated in other parts of the country.

It could be a school with lessons for us all.