When It Hits Closed to Home

by Dan Masterton

Over the last few months, my wife, Katherine, and I have been trying to decide what to do for our oldest daughter, Lucy, for kindergarten.

We serendipitously bought our house in 2019, a year sooner than we planned, while we were awaiting the arrival of our second kiddo, Cecilia. Not only did it spare us the insanity of this housing market, but it also put us five houses down the street from a public elementary school. The school grades out average by public standards, but the proximity, its feeding into a really strong middle school, and the diversity of our community are all easy marks in its favor.

On the other hand, we also are thinking about Catholic elementary school. We belong to a parish that jointly sponsors a school with the other parish in town, and as registered parishioners, we would be able to send Lucy there at the parishioner rate – still a significant cost nonetheless.

Going there would make her a part of a Catholic school community with daily religion class and prayer, Sacramental prep, and regular Mass. We also looked at a multi-parish school in the next town over that was a bit bigger, a bit more expensive, and offered more robust programs, but to receive their parishioner rate, we would need to re-register and re-establish ourselves in a new community – something I didn’t think we could do in time.

I could go on and on about the pros and cons, but this is the top-line discussion we were in the middle of having.

And then the diocese abruptly announced that our parish school was closing. At the end of this year. Period.

The usual criticisms certainly apply, as the diocese cited not just low, decreasing enrollment but also financial instability. The Church has had to divert tons of money addressing sexual abuse scandals with legal fees and settlements; the Church doesn’t do enough to manage and foster finances, sustain schools, and mobilize communities; the Church isn’t particularly transparent about these processes with ultimatums or deadlines before fairly suddenly announcing it is merging or closing schools.

I am not one to get particularly lathered up when these decisions come down, assuming generally that those who’ve rendered the decision do so with big-picture awareness and all the hard and gloomy facts. When people come out with rants and complaints or begin trying to stage rallies or hold fundraisers, I think it comes from a good place, but is an unfortunate case of too little, too late. That sort of support must come steadily, on a perennial basis, for a school to be sustained.

This all makes me feel somewhat implicated. We toured the school, and we led them on the way you do when you are trying to consider an open-ended decision. We didn’t update them on our process (we’ve been in a holding pattern while we consider job situations and budgeting). And we didn’t approach this decision as if we were very likely going to choose Catholic school – in fact, we perhaps most leaned toward using public schools K-8 and saving up for Catholic high school.

I wouldn’t say that I feel like I’m part of the problem. I follow the news from our school closely, knew the basic facts, and walked into our tour as an invested and supportive parishioner. However, I also have not been part of the solution. I didn’t consider using their Pre-K program for our preschool needs; I haven’t donated any time or money in the three years I’ve belonged to the school’s parish; I didn’t come into this gung-ho that my kids would go there. And now the option will be gone.

I don’t know how, over time, I will feel about my part – or, more broadly, my parish’s part – in how this came down. But it is another data point in a trend that worries me. If the mobility and flexibility of Millennials, and the informality and aversion to affiliation of GenZ behind us, continue in this way, then what other institutions will disintegrate before we have a chance to use them, to become a part of them, to help them evolve and grow anew?

Maybe there will yet be a new wave of Catholic education that proceeds from our generations’ unique approach. Could the later starts to our families and child-bearing mean stronger financial footing among families who do send their kids to Catholic schools? Could the contraction in schools prune away space for as yet unknown growth? Could the changes in how young adults approach training, early career, and trajectory mean a different model for staffing schools?

I like to think hopefully, and not see closure as an unmitigated bad. For now, the starkness of this reality stares us in the face rather unapologetically. Perhaps over time, different trends will sketch an arc toward something brighter.