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Two Catholic elementary schools in Silver Spring and Hyattsville will merge into a new school with a new curriculum focused on both areas' diversity, a key step in modernizing an archdiocese facing dwindling enrollment and revenue, school officials say.

As the Archdiocese of Washington faces a 2.4 percent drop in enrollment this year across its 96 schools in the Washington, D.C., region, Saint Camillus School in Silver Spring and Saint Mark the Evangelist in Hyattsville will merge to form a new pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school, Saint Francis International, to open next year on St. Camillus' campus.

Starting in the 2011-2012 school year, the pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade students at the new St. Francis International will attend school at the St. Camillus campus, located off Piney Branch Road; grades five through eight will attend at the St. Mark campus, just three miles away on Adelphi Road.

"It's one school community with two campuses," said Matthew Russell, the principal at St. Mark, who will be "co-head" of St. Francis, along with St. Camillus principal Tobias Harkleroad.

St. Mark was among 14 archdiocese schools that held consultations in the fall to discuss their futures amid dwindling enrollment. St. Mark's enrollment, at 266 students, is down 8 percent this year. The St. Camillus campus opened in 1954 with the capacity for more than 1,000 students; its enrollment this year is 258 students.

The enrollment numbers are polar opposites of elementary schools in Montgomery County Public Schools, which have enrollments well over capacity because of enormous kindergarten and first-grade classes. Harkleroad said enrollment at St. Camillus is lowest in elementary grade levels.

Elsewhere in the archdiocese, Holy Redeemer, a 149-student school in Northwest Washington, will close at the end of this year and 129-student St. Hugh School in Greenbelt will merge with St. Joseph Regional School in Beltsville. Two schools in southern Maryland closed at the end of last year. St. Michael the Archangel in Silver Spring is still weighing its options and should make a decision shortly on its future, said Patricia Weitzel-O'Neill, the archdiocese superintendent.

But the archdiocese hopes its darkest days are behind it. Four million dollars of tuition assistance was available to students last year, up from $1 million the year before, Weitzel-O'Neill said. That increase is thanks to a shift that put tuition assistance as the primary fundraising priority, she said.

"Instead of going to repairing a roof or a parking lot or whatever capital improvements, the archdiocese has put the money into tuition assistance," said Weitzel-O'Neill.

In addition to a shift in managing revenue, the archdiocese has shifted how it manages its schools, Weitzel-O'Neill said.

In the classroom, basic elements of the Catholic education remain, but teachers are focusing less on testing and more on critical thinking skills, leadership training and integrating different subjects, Weitzel-O'Neill said. Extending the school day and school year is being considered, Weitzel-O'Neill said.

The St. Francis curriculum will focus on interactive learning and "breaking down the barriers between classes and grade levels," Harkleroad said. For example, implementing a vegetable garden where students learn how to grow food and run a business by selling the vegetables to the cafeteria, Harkleroad said.

The curriculum will be based loosely on the academy program at MCPS and the International Baccalaureate program that focuses more on social and job skills than text-based instruction, Harkleroad said.

"This will draw not just Catholic kids," said Elizabeth Gordon-McNeil, a member of St. Camillus's advisory board who has sent three sons to the school. "We are no longer competing with Catholic schools, we are drawing from other private schools with families with deeper pockets."

French and Latin language courses are expected to be added; both schools offer only Spanish currently.

St. Mark's population is 49 percent black, 18 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Asian and 12 percent white. St. Camillus is 60 percent black, eight percent Asian and two percent white. Twenty-four percent are Hispanic, but that pales in comparison to the surrounding community, Harkleroad said.

The curriculum should attract an immigrant community put off by more traditional approaches, Harkleroad said, and once they are interested, hopefully the tuition costs won't seem so daunting.

"When you tell a Latino family that tuition is $6,800 but you have to take a long time to explain that people don't pay that much, you don't get past that reaction that says ‘I can't afford that,'" Harkleroad said.

Between 50 and 60 percent of St. Camillus students receive need-based tuition assistance, Harkleroad said. Tuition will be between $6,500 and $7,000 per year at St. Francis.

Richard Mollel attended an open house for St. Francis in late January, one of several schools, both public and private, he is considering for his 3- and 5-year-old children.

"With the world we live in this day and age, it's almost like being at the United Nations," Mollel, a Bowie resident originally from Tanzania, said of the diversity in the area. "We are looking for that kind of environment."

But the change in curriculum could bring a change in personnel, Harkleroad said. The schools will not determine the St. Francis staff until enrollment numbers are finalized, at which point current teachers can reapply to work at St. Francis, Harkleroad said. Training will be offered to teachers to adapt to the new curriculum, but there's no guarantee all will be retained, he said.

"We don't want to feel like we are cutting anyone loose because for any group this is the most scary for the staff," Harkleroad said. "We have some people that may have to lose their jobs."

"Our schools have been in the same mindset for the last 10 to 15 years," Harkleroad said. "It's time to change that mindset to fit the 21st century."