Unable to sidestep its financial woes any longer, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced its biggest school shakeup in years Monday, with plans to close 14 schools, consolidate two more and open three new schools.
The closings dot the city and near west and south suburbs and are expected to displace 2,390 pupils at the end of this school year.
Officials said the retrenchment would allow the archdiocese to reduce its direct subsidies to schools to a sustainable $6 million per year, as well as redirect some money back to the 248 schools the nation’s largest Catholic school system will operate next fall.
“We’re not turning our backs on any of those children,” said Nicholas Wolsonovich, superintendent of archdiocesan schools. “Even though we are closing these 14, we still have 91 Catholic schools that serve the inner city. We feel the remaining schools will be stronger because of this.”
Wolsonovich said there would be spaces for displaced pupils and staff members at other archdiocese schools.
Many schools slated for closure are in poor neighborhoods, where parishes are too weak to subsidize the schools on their own. But the proposed consolidation and one of the closings are in fast gentrifying neighborhoods where an influx of money has not translated into strong Catholic schools.
As parents learned of the news Monday, gathering in rainy schoolyards to commiserate, at least one mother and daughter broke down and sobbed together. Others were already planning strategy.
“We are going to do a petition drive and we are going to fight,” said Olintha Smith, who has three children and one grandchild at Blessed Sacrament-Our Lady of Lourdes School and graduated from the school in the Lawndale neighborhood herself in 1969.
In west suburban Melrose Park, Anthony Sanservino–an Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School board member and one of three generations to attend the school–sounded a similar theme: “I’ve decided to fight to keep it open.”
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That kind of loyalty recalls the wrenching battles of 1990, when Cardinal Joseph Bernardin closed 25 archdiocesan elementary schools, and again in 1994, when 24 more closed.
By that time, a two-decade transition from staffs of nuns and monks to salaried lay teachers, at a time when many Catholics were leaving the city, had nearly bankrupted the archdiocese. But the closings that stanched the red ink opened a bitter rift with some parishioners, and Bernardin later called the episodes the most difficult of his 14 years as archbishop of Chicago.
A task force created by Bernardin to plan for long-term stability in Catholic education greeted his successor, then-Archbishop Francis George, with a recommendation in 1997 to close as many as 45 schools.
George tried to save schools
George refused and tried a series of different initiatives to help prop up the financial fortunes of his schools.
In Springfield, the archdiocese won a $500 tuition tax break for families, but it failed in its campaign to get state funding for state-mandated programs and paperwork.
Archdiocesan officials toyed with the idea of turning some struggling schools into charter schools–a plan embraced by then-Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas–but ultimately determined that a charter school could not be a Catholic school in any meaningful way.
Two large-scale fundraising efforts–a $200 million drive through individual parishes, and an as-yet unannounced $100 million campaign to tap major donors–could help with capital costs, scholarships, technology and other needs, Wolsonovich said. But neither would solve the problems of continuing subsidies or declining enrollments at the most troubled schools.
Wolsonovich said that most of the schools on Monday’s closing list had been examined for years. And while Cardinal George had balked at previous plans to close large numbers of schools, Wolsonovich said George had supported the latest round of evaluations from the beginning and approved the closings a week ago.
“No one wants to close schools,” Wolsonovich said. George “knows the difficulties and he understands them, but he accepts them.”
George’s spokesman said Monday the cardinal was in meetings and unavailable for comment.
The closing announcement was softened by the announcement that three new Catholic schools will open in the city next fall–a surprise after three decades in which only one new archdiocesan elementary school opened.
The three proposed schools will depend on traditional sources of funding–parishes and religious orders. All three new schools will use existing buildings.
1 to be independent
An as-yet unnamed middle school on the West Side will not be an archdiocesan school at all but an independent school run by the De La Salle Christian Brothers to serve 75 African-American students. The religious order operates a similar school on the Southwest Side for Hispanic students.
A new Immaculate Conception School on the Far South Side will be operated by a parish but staffed largely by Mexico-based Daughters of Mary Immaculate of Guadalupe.
On the Near North Side, a different Immaculate Conception School, closed years ago, will reopen to serve a neighborhood with both public housing complexes and high-priced townhouses. Wolsonovich said this Immaculate Conception parish has the strength to subsidize the school, which may serve many of the pupils at nearby St. Joseph School, slated for closure.
While many of the closings are taking place in neighborhoods where residents have little money for tuition, the consolidation of St. Matthias and Transfiguration Schools on the Far North Side underscores a different problem. Close to popular Lincoln Square, the neighborhood has found its biggest problem in recent years has been soaring housing prices. But enrollment at both schools continued to slump, hovering just above 200 in recent years.
Young people moving into the neighborhood are coming to church, said Rev. Terry Keehan, pastor at St. Matthias and administrator of Transfiguration, but some do not have children, and many others are willing to send their children to magnet schools and other options.
“We’ve got two or three generations of parents who don’t automatically buy into Catholic education,” Keehan said.
At the schools facing closure, demographics and changing attitudes took a back seat to more immediate concerns.
Beverly Green waited in the drizzle outside St. Joseph School in the Back of the Yards neighborhood Monday, wondering if she would be able to find another school for her son that could match the $2,600 a year tuition.When Sage Paulin, 9, finally emerged, hopping with excess energy, he had a simpler source of disappointment than his mother’s: “I don’t want to leave this school, ’cause I’ve been here a long time.”
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Catholic Archdiocese plans school closings
Financial difficulties are prompting the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago to close or consolidate more than a dozen of the 261 elementary schools in the city and suburbs. At the same time, the archdiocese plans to add three new elementary schools in the fall.
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SCHOOLS TO BE CLOSED IN JUNE ENROLLMENT
1. Blessed Sacrament/
Our Lady of Lourdes 225
2. Holy Innocents 179
3. Holy Name of Mary 187
4. Mary of Nazareth 161
5. Mary Queen of Heaven 236
6. McKinley Park Catholic 171
7. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel 150
8. St. Ambrose 88
9. St. Clare of Montefalco 202
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10. St. Gelasius 203
11. St. James 165
12. St. Joseph 99
13. St. Joseph 195
14. St. Michael 129
SCHOOLS TO BE CONSOLIDATED
15. St. Matthias
16. Transfiguration of Our Lord
NEW SCHOOLS TO OPEN
17. Immaculate Conception
18. Immaculate Conception
19. Unnamed new school
(at former Our Lady Help of Christians Parish School)
DECLINE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
The archdiocese has closed more than 60 elementary schools since 1990.
1990: 325
2001: 261
Note: Years indicate the beginning of school years.
Source: Archdiocese of Chicago
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