After a century of educating young Catholics, St. Mark’s Catholic Church will shutter its parochial school beginning this fall, citing decreasing enrollment and increasing costs, church officials said Saturday.
The school, located at 1983 Dayton Ave., sent a letter to parents saying the K-8 school is closing this fall, after church officials spent several months evaluating the parish and school finances and were prompted to “make some very difficult decisions quickly.”
Those decisions led to 17 positions at the school being eliminated, essentially gutting the K-8th grade program.
The preschool, which is “growing and thriving” will remain open.
Father Huberto Palomino said Saturday that the decision was very difficult and very sad for a lot of people. Church officials told people the tough news yesterday.
“It’s very sad,” Palomino said. “Yesterday I compared the situation to the first funeral I celebrated for a baby. I was looking at the family and it was so hard to start the funeral, I see St. Mark’s as a baby that has been entrusted to me. I’m very glad God entrusted these families and children to me.”
When Palomino came to the parrish a decade ago, he spent a lot of time, he said, making the church and school feel unified. For years, he would visit two families with children in the school each week to get to know them.
Palomino said while the school closure appears to be an ending, he hopes that parishioners and former students will work together to make it a new beginning. He’s not sure what that beginning will be, but he has faith something good will come of it if people join together.
The school closing was not a big surprise.
In his letter to parents of students Palomino wrote, “As you know, enrollment has been declining for decades.”
Five years ago, he wrote, the school had 179 students. Only 32 students were enrolled for fall classes, he said.
“The parish has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to make up the difference between tuition and the true cost of educating the students,” he wrote, but can no longer do so.
Patrick Shrake, who graduated eighth grade from St. Mark’s in 1980, said that as a member of the church’s finance committee for 17 years, he was not surprised by Friday’s news.
There has been a steady decline in enrollment, he said.
In 1970, when he started school there were 1200 students, he said. Five years ago there were only 170 students, he said.
This fall, only 32 students were enrolled, church officials said.
“This didn’t just happen in one year,” he said.
And the decline in enrollment was somewhat of a catch 22. As the school shrank, so did the number of families who wanted to go there. Some people left because the school was just too small, he said.
Parishioner Patricia Hartshorn, 78, grew up nearby, attended the school and has been active in the church for more than 70 years.
She said she cried Friday when she heard the school was closing.
“I was stunned,” she said. “It wasn’t that I was surprised. I knew enrollment was going down.”
Gene Thill said he also cried. He graduated as an eighth grader from the school in 1976.
All three former students say they believe enrollment is down because of the changing nature of the neighborhood. During her childhood, there were nearly 25 kids on her street alone, Hartshorn said.
The days of big families with ten or more children living in the neighborhood and attending the local school have passed, Shrake said.
In addition, because the houses are so large, the people who are buying them and moving in are not usually large families starting out with young children. Older people are better able to afford the larger homes.
School officials will reach out to parents enrolled in fall classes to help them find a new school, he wrote.