HOMEPAGE for this issue: March 2, 2011 Download PDF Version

Low enrollment, deficit to force Loyola School to close at academic year’s end

By Roxanne King

After 88 years of faithful service, Loyola School will close at the end of this academic year due to low student enrollment and increasing school deficits, the pastor announced Feb. 25. 

“We are pained by the sufferings it will bring to those who went to school here or sent their children to school here, and to the parish, which has been supporting the school. But we have no choice,” Jesuit Father Eustace Sequeira told the Denver Catholic Register. “We just don’t have the finances to remain open.”

The school, located at 2350 Gaylord St. in Denver, opened in 1924 in the basement of St. Ignatius Loyola Church. The parish built the current school facility in the 1950s.

“Closing a school, no matter how necessary, is always painful,” Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., said in a letter to the Catholic community, which was read at the parish’s Masses over the weekend. “To the degree our resources allow, we do not want a lack of financial means, transportation, or information to keep Loyola families from continuing the Catholic education of their children.” 

The archdiocese will hold an information night for school parents to meet with principals of surrounding Catholic schools to facilitate enrollment in those schools and will honor the tuition agreements parents have with Loyola School for the 2011-12 academic year, Catholic schools Superinten-dent Dick Thompson said.  In addition, Loyola educators will be given priority in job opportunities in other Catholic schools, he said.

There are 37 parish schools and two archdiocesan high schools in the Denver Archdiocese. The last school closing in the archdiocese was eight years ago.

“Loyola has been impacted by several factors,” Thompson told the Register. “The primary ones are changing demographics, the kindergarten through sixth-grade configuration, lack of sufficient enrollment, significant budget shortfall for several years and capital improvement needs.”

The school had been challenged by those issues for 20 years, Thompson said.

“It’s more serious today considering the many educational options available now and the poor economy,” explained Thompson. “The fragile environment was the tipping point that took Loyola out of viability.

“This school is not closing because of poor academic performance,” he stressed. “In fact they are well above the local public school in math, reading and writing.

They provide a quality Catholic education. What really makes this difficult is that they were providing a good service—there weren’t enough people who either could or wanted to take advantage of it.”

Loyola was among five schools told two years ago that the archdiocese would no longer be able to provide grant funding to cover the school’s budget deficit. Thompson said declining school enrollments and lower charitable contributions to the archdiocese forced that decision.

Loyola principal Sister Mary Ellen Roach, S.C., who has served the school for 42 years, said the school had taken action recently to build enrollment, adding a seventh grade this school year with plans to add an eighth grade in the fall, and prolonging the school day by a half-hour. Those steps led the archdiocese to provide grants to bridge the school’s economic shortfall one more year. But the extra time couldn’t save the school.

“My heart is broken, as is everybody’s,” Sister Roach said. “But we need to look at the reality of the picture and that is that it is very, very difficult at this time to find the financial help that we need.

“It’s not the archdiocese, they are not abandoning us,” she said. “It’s not that anyone is abandoning us—it’s the reality that teachers’ salaries are increasing, costs are increasing, and our families are struggling to pay $100 a month for tuition. We would need to charge $4,000 to $6,000 a year for tuition and that’s just not feasible for our population.”

Tuition payments paid by the school families account for a scant one-sixth of the school budget, said parish Finance Council Chair Kevin O’Connor, a professional financial advisor.

“Without substantial subsidy there was not replacement money from the parish or school families,” O’Connor said, adding that the school could not continue looking to outside donors for support. “From an analytical approach I understood the archdiocese’s decision (to discontinue grant funding) because the depth of subsidy was getting to the point where it was not a prudent use of resources.

“We could not see a path to sustainability,” he said. “So the decision was: Do you make the decision this year, next year or the following? But the decision seemed inevitable.”

Over the last decade, Loyola School received $3 million in aid from the Archdiocese of Denver, Seeds of Hope and The Catholic Foundation, according to an archdiocesan fact sheet. In that time, the school’s yearly enrollment has averaged 100 students. The current enrollment is 59 percent of the school’s minimum capacity goal.

The school’s enrollment is unique among the archdiocesan schools in that it serves a predominately non-Catholic, African American population:  just 35 percent of the enrollment is Catholic, 95 percent is minority with 86 percent African American and 9 percent Hispanic. More than half the enrollment, 62 percent, is low-income and qualifies for free and reduced lunch.

“Loyola School, through the leadership of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, many dedicated teachers and staff, and its Jesuit pastors, has served thousands of diverse and at-need families with great devotion,” Arch-bishop Chaput said in his letter.

“We remain committed to our education ministry, especially with at-need families,” the archbishop emphasized. “At the same time, like any family, our resources are limited. We have a duty of financial prudence and good stewardship that we owe to other parishes that rely on our assistance.”

According to the archdiocesan fact sheet, Loyola is one of 13 schools that serve populations in the inner city, edge of the inner city or in rural areas affected by demographic changes. With Loyola closing, five of the schools remain in the inner city.

Loyola Parish will now consider options for using the building, administrators said, expressing hope for it to serve some Catholic educational purpose.

“We’re gonna go where God takes us,” O’Connor said. “We can’t see the future but we know there is one.”

Despite the difficulty of the decision, those involved in it agreed it was the right one.

“The archdiocese has done everything it could,” Father Sequeira said. “It wasn’t possible to save the school. When you see the writing on the wall, you stop and say, ‘Is it God’s will that you continue?’ This is God’s will as far as I’m concerned.”