An educational starting place for many Catholic families in the Region is about to come down. Demolition of the old St. Mary School in East Chicago is scheduled to start Wednesday morning and is being torn down due to health and safety issues discovered two years ago.   The Diocese of Gary did a study to see if the historic school could be saved but repairs would have cost too much and now parish officials hope to replace the nearly 100-year old building in the 800 block of West 144^th Street, with a new, larger facility, according to an article in  http://www.nwitimes.com.   A group called “Friends of St.Mary,” has been established to help raise funds for the new building.