Last week, my own diocese announced a unique plan to save some Catholic schools threatened with closure:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of the Diocese of Brooklyn unveiled a proposal on Saturday to convert four Roman Catholic schools singled out for closing into public charter schools, an 11th-hour lifeline meant to preserve the education provided in the buildings and stave off potential overcrowding in city schools.

It would be the first time such a plan was undertaken in New York and could serve as a model for converting other Catholic and private schools. Mr. Bloomberg framed the plan as an unlikely alliance, the product of creative thinking in a time of economic distress. He said it would “bring stability and much-needed predictability back” to families with children at some of the 14 schools in Brooklyn and Queens that the diocese has marked for closing at the end of the academic year because of declining enrollment and rising operating costs.

At the same time, it would ameliorate what could be an overwhelming influx of students from closed Catholic schools into crowded neighborhood public schools. The four new schools would have room for 1,000 students; students currently enrolled in the parochial schools would be guaranteed seats.

Bishop DiMarzio invoked the story of Noah’s ark in describing the “flood situation” the church faces financially, comparing the mayor to Noah. “He’s throwing out a life preserver and I’m going to grab it,” he said at a news conference with Mr. Bloomberg at City Hall.

The city would lease the buildings from the diocese, but religious instruction would be banned and religious symbols in the buildings would be covered.

Mr. Bloomberg, emphasizing that the proposal was in its early stages, did not disclose the names of the four schools and said the number of schools could shrink or grow. He said leaders of other faiths had also expressed interest in turning their private schools into charter schools. The proposal would require approval by the Legislature because state law bars charter schools from having any ties to religious institutions.

But not everyone is enamored of the idea. This morning, the Times published a followup:

Despite the celebratory air this month as Mr. Bloomberg and the bishop, Nicholas A. DiMarzio, announced the idea, the plan faces significant legal, political and educational hurdles.

Lawsuits over church-state questions seem inevitable. And with the mayor already locked in a battle to keep control of the city’s public schools, it may be an inopportune time to ask Albany to scrap a law that bars the conversion of private schools into charter schools.

If the proposal is approved, it would allow four charter schools to be created without the perennial problem of finding classroom space. It could also result in a new type of charter school, one led largely by traditional institutions like the Roman Catholic Church, in a movement that has been dominated by out-of-the-box organizations branded as agents of change.

“This is going to raise a whole myriad of philosophical and practical questions about how public education is supposed to be provided, and I don’t think they are easily resolved,” said former Assemblyman Steven Sanders, who led the Assembly’s Education Committee from 1995 to 2005. “It’s a thicket, there’s no question.”

At the plan’s unveiling on Feb. 7, Bishop DiMarzio said he hoped the converted schools would retain some elements of their Catholic past. “We think with charter schools we can continue education,” he said. “We can also maintain our value system.”

But civil liberties advocates have asked that the schools be prohibited from sponsoring religious after-school programs and invoking Catholicism in the classroom.

“There are real concerns about whether this is parochial school education by another name,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “They can’t airlift the entire school into the same place and call that a public school.”

The obvious First Amendment issues may be among the easiest to resolve, legal and educational experts say. Crucifixes would be obscured, proselytizing by teachers would be banned during school hours and religious portions of the curriculum would be jettisoned. But what about the city’s required fourth-grade health curriculum? The church objects to the sex-education components on moral grounds, and in several cases where the city already leases school buildings from the diocese, conflicts have been avoided by moving students off campus for the health portion.

You can check out the Times link for more. Stay tuned.

PHOTO: Bishop Nicholas Di Marzio and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. From the New York Daily News.