Category: News || By John Barna and Jason Togyer

Faculty and staff of St. Joseph Regional School in Port Vue welcomed parents and alumni for a final "open house" on Sunday.

The Catholic school, which serves 170 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, will close and merge with St. Angela Merici School in White Oak to form the new "Mon Yough Catholic," located at the White Oak site.

"Mon Yough Catholic" also was the name of a short-lived McKeesport-based Catholic high school for girls that merged into Serra Catholic High School in the early 1970s.

However, there is an online petition complaining about the new name. The petition, which has more than 200 signatures, complains that the school should have been named after a saint, and that the words "Mon Yough" carry a negative connotation because of "Mon-Yough Community Services," which provides mental health and mental retardation services.

Three Catholic schools in the Woodland Hills area also are being consolidated into one school, to be known as "East Catholic."

Catholic diocese officials have said the decision to consolidate the schools was made due to declining enrollment, changing demographics and the increased cost of operating separate buildings.

St. Joseph Regional itself is the product of a 1984 merger of several McKeesport-area Catholic schools and draws primarily from McKeesport Area and South Allegheny communities. The school was built in 1954 and is located on Romine Avenue.

Above, Veronica Tyszkiewicz and her dad, Ron, both of Glassport, check out a display of photographs. The younger Tyszkiewicz played basketball at St. Joseph's.

Seventh-grader Kassie Opfar and eighth-grader Jessie Washowich show off their school spirit.
(More photos after the jump.)

Linda Reynolds Cosgrove of Dravosburg attended St. Joseph's in the mid-1980s.

All photos: © 2012 John Barna, special to Tube City Almanac.