BALTIMORE — Maryland is considered the cradle of Roman Catholic education in America, but if that heritage is to endure, decisive action must be taken soon to address falling enrollment at Baltimore's parochial schools, the archbishop said.

For a decade, leaders have prayed the situation would turn around, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien said. But this academic year, enrollment at archdiocese schools is down 5 percent (approximately 1,200 students). That's the equivalent of four full schools and twice the average decline of the previous five years.

"To punt any further would be to lose the school system completely," O'Brien said. "It's obvious that some action has to be taken."

O'Brien recently gathered priests and educators to discuss the problem, and a committee has been formed to find solutions over the next 18 months. Leaders want most of all to avoid closing schools, but they'll also have to look at painful options such as consolidation.

Honolulu schools, too, are grappling with falling enrollment, which is at its lowest level since World War II: all seven Catholic high schools report a decline.

Baltimore, where English Catholics settled in the 1600s, was home to the first U.S. diocese, and was where Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1806 opened a Catholic school for girls. Seton, who was canonized in 1975, is credited with starting the parochial school system in the U.S.

The archdiocese's schools are facing the same problem as many Catholic school systems across the country, especially in the Northeast, said Mark Gray, a research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

Catholic schools traditionally served immigrants, who were concentrated in Northeast cities. As Catholics move to the suburbs and the Sun Belt, school buildings can't follow, Gray said.

In the suburbs and the South and Southwest, the problem is reversed, with many Catholic schools not having enough seats for their growing communities, Gray said.

And the demographic shift toward smaller families translates to fewer students, O'Brien said.

Historically, the work of members of religious orders kept costs low for Catholic schools, but now the staffs are mostly lay people and systems have to keep up with the costs of salaries and health benefits, Gray said.

The worsening economy has also left families with less money to spare for tuition.

"There is a real concern about the future," Gray said. "Who are Catholic schools for if the average Catholic family can't afford tuition? It's supposed to be accessible to any Catholic family that wants to send their children there."

Ensuring that schools are accessible geographically and financially is key to increasing enrollment, O'Brien said. But Catholic school systems may find themselves re-evaluating their missions.

In the nearby Archdiocese of Washington, church leaders recently went through a process like the one Baltimore is beginning, holding a convocation on enrollment in October 2007. One result was fine-tuning of the archdiocese's tuition assistance program. The archdiocese used to help needy schools balance budgets, but the new program aimed at retaining and attracting students means money goes toward an education instead of just paying bills, said spokeswoman Susan Gibbs.

The archdiocese spent $940,000 this academic year to retain 311 students and attract 238 new ones, and those families are paying $1.8 million in tuition, Gibbs said.

This academic year, the Washington diocese also took the unusual step of converting seven schools to a public charter group, which aims to maintain the standards and values of Catholic schools without focusing on religion.

Excluding the number of students lost through the conversion, enrollment in the archdiocese's schools was 2 percent lower this year.

The Diocese of Brooklyn and New York City announced just this month that they are considering a similar move, converting four schools with falling enrollment into publicly funded charter schools without religious instruction. (State law prohibits converting religious schools into charters, so leaders will lobby to change the statute.)

In Hawai'i, Carmen Himenes, the superintendent of Catholic schools, said there are no plans currently to switch any schools to charter schools.