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When parishioners and parents raised $250,000 to save St. John the Baptist Elementary School last year, Kelly Sullivan and other parents believed it would buy the school some time. “We were under the impression the money would give us time to come up with some ideas, a solution, a plan to work on the following year, and the year after that," she says.
Sullivan was half right: St. John the Baptist Elementary School stayed open for the 2013–14 school year—but no further reprieve was granted, and the Bevo Mill area school will close at the end of this semester, along with Immaculate Heart of Mary Elementary School.
The news came after numerous meetings between city-parish leaders to discuss possible plans for other Catholic elementary schools in the city. “I’ve almost forgotten about all those ‘collaborative’ meetings," says Sullivan. "It came out to be a whole lot of nothing.”
Alan Winkelmann, associate superintendent for elementary school administration for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, doesn’t put it that bluntly, though he admits that the meetings did not result in any solutions for the schools slated to close, nor any solace for other schools that continue to struggle. “They couldn’t quite come to a conclusion about doing anything different for right now,” says Winklemann, "other than maintaining the parish-based schools they have."
One Catholic education insider involved with the process called the outcome of the meetings and lack of innovation a “failure of imagination." “Whenever the parishes came up against the most difficult issues, they naturally reverted to what they know best, which is the ‘my neighborhood, my school, my K-to-8’ model," the educator said. "We can do that, so that’s all they were left with." The message seemed to be Darwinian—only the fiscally strong will survive.
According to numbers kept by the mayor’s office, several parochial schools hover around 200 students. Two or three schools have far fewer than 200, a number which is seen by many as a threshold of viability. When St. John the Baptist Elementary School announced that it would close, it had about 120 students; Immaculate Heart of Mary Elementary School’s graduating eighth-grade class has 10 students. On the other hand, St. Gabriel the Archangel, which includes much of St. Louis Hills, has about 500 students. St. Margaret of Scotland has almost 300 students and is planning to add a middle-school building.
One parent whose child attends St. John the Baptist said tuition at St. Margaret of Scotland would have been $2,000 more than he was paying at St. John. Instead, he's planning to send his son to St. Dominic Savio Catholic School in Affton. About 80 percent of parents whose children attend St. John the Baptist Elementary School and Immaculate Heart of Mary Elementary School plan to send their children to other Catholic schools, Winkelmann says, with many going to St. Stephen Protomartyr (near Carondelet Park) or St. Mark School (in South County).
The city's educational landscape has changed considerably since 2000, when approximately 51,000 students were in the city's public schools, 13,000 students attended suburban schools as part of the voluntary desegregation plan, and 11,000 students were in the city's Catholic parochial schools. Overall, school enrollment in the city dropped by almost 27,000 since 2000, from 74,579 students in city public and private schools in 2000 to the current level of 47,728. In 2013, the number of city children in Catholic schools dropped to 6,600—a loss of 4,075 students. City public schools enroll 26,965 students, and the desegregation program has dropped to 4,935. City charter schools, which did not exist in 2000, now have 9,228 children.
With some parents unable to pay tuition, it's led to lower enrollment at some parochial schools. Some St. Louisans have suggested the Catholic church manage a charter school without a religious component. “Why can’t the Archdiocese operate a charter school the same way Catholic Charities operates housing?” asked one critic, noting that secular services to the poor are often given by the church without regard to a person’s religion.
One school headed in that direction is De La Salle Middle School, housed in the former St. Matthew School in The Ville neighborhood. The Catholic school has about 60 students in fifth through eighth grades. It's affiliated with the Christian Brothers of the Midwest, and it's not an Archdiocesan parochial school. Its executive director, Corey Quinn, intends to turn the school into a charter school by the 2015-2016 school year.
“We’re making a choice for students and families living on the margins,” he says. “To me, that is the catholic—with a small ‘c’—universal language of love that says, ‘We’re going to help you, and that’s the primary thing.”
If this model is successful, he says, the educational mission of the middle school would remain the same, but families would not have to pay tuition and religious instruction might be offered after school outside the normal curriculum. A local university could be the school's educational sponsor, with the faculty and methodology remaining the same, he adds.
The Archdiocese has rejected such an idea as an option for its parochial schools. Critics say the Archdiocese is reluctant to try this option in South St. Louis, where it would provide a no-tuition option to struggling parochial schools. (Currently, the only Catholic grade schools located in North St. Louis are De La Salle Middle School and St. Louis Catholic Academy, at 4720 Carter Avenue.)
The Archdiocese considers three city schools—Saint Cecilia, Most Holy Trinity Catholic School, and St. Louis the King School at the Cathedral—“mission schools" because they receive significant underwriting from the church and other sources. As some see it, the Catholic school system faces a two-tier problem, with no middle ground between mission schools and other schools in comparatively more affluent neighborhoods.
Sullivan plans to send one son who currently attends St. John the Baptist Elementary School to St. Margaret of Scotland. Last year, her older son graduated from St. John, after starting in its special-education program. “St. John’s got my son in a place where he could go from a self-contained classroom to being a regular-education student at St. Mary’s High School,” Sullivan says. “That, to me, was an impressive accomplishment. Not all schools would have been up to that task.”
While she's upbeat about the job that faculty and staff did at St. John the Baptist Elementary School, she believes the Archdiocesan administration could make improvements. “I feel, with Catholic schools, there is a lot of bureaucracy and rhetoric, and just some old-school way of thinking,” Sullivan says. “They need to be more up to date and think creatively.”
Thinking outside parish boundaries about financing, recruitment, and administration could be a start. “The more we rely on the only model we know—which is the K-through-8 parochial model—the less capacity we’ll have to meet the needs of the poor,” says one observer.
Winkelmann counters that the Archdiocese offers financial aid and that the Today and Tomorrow Educational Foundation assists families with tuition. Even with that aid, though, Kathleen Anger—a retired principal at St. John the Baptist Elementary School and a parent who put her six children through Catholic schools—says some families who are not affluent enough to pay their own way or poor enough to qualify for significant assistance struggle to keep their children in parochial schools. “The sad part is, once again, it becomes those who can afford Catholic education have it,” she says, “and for those who cannot afford it, you’re just out of luck.”
For Quinn, changing De La Salle Middle School into a charter school is the most pragmatic option. “This is, for us, the best possible way to address this need,” he says. “I’d like to change the policy, but in the meantime these kids have to get an education.”
Note: This article has been updated to reflect that St. Louis Catholic Academy is located in North St. Louis.
