Last Friday, the school where I work announced that it was closing our high school.
For now, it will unfold as a phasing out of the high school portion of the parish’s school ministry. We will not admit any incoming freshmen; we will facilitate transfers for our eleven rising sophomores; our sixty rising upperclassmen have a month to declare their intent to stay or transfer, with the plan to continue serving those two classes through their graduation. Then, the high school will close for good in Spring 2019.
Our shrinking high school was in a unique position - though the high school is small and struggling, the parish and wider school are both wonderfully healthy. Enrollment in our early childhood, elementary, and middle schools is stable and strong, and our parish is a sizable faith community with bustling activity and steady parishioner support. So, the decision to close our school was going to have to come from within.
The leadership of our parish and school are committed to thoughtful self-examination and undertake strategic planning every few years to keep things moving forward.1 So last year, an outside consulting group came in and began a year-long process of focus groups, surveys, and data aggregation and analysis, all leading up to a thorough report and recommendation to our pastor and head of school. That process came to a head this month, and last Friday the decision became public, first to faculty and staff, then to students, and finally to all families and parishioners.
The timing was interesting for me personally. On Thursday night, I received notification of a 7:10am all-staff meeting for that Friday morning, but it so happened that I was scheduled to depart school at 7am with seniors from my theology class for a day of service at a south side Habitat for Humanity site.2 So, off we went without knowing what was happening back on campus, and we did our day's work at the construction site. That afternoon, my chaperones and I learned the news through the email blast message, and then we all learned formally upon our return to campus through special conversations from our admins who graciously stayed around to talk with us face-to-face.
As I finished reading the email message on the build site that afternoon, I walked out of a half-finished garage and back up the rear stairs to reenter the house in which I was working. Before I went back in, I happened to look off to the side, toward the street and over the foundation of a yet unbuilt house. There, at the street curb, was parked our school van, complete with our logo, phone number, and website on the peeling van-wrap that advertises our school. It was quite the visual contrast to see in the foreground this freshly poured foundation beside an almost-completed house with the background of this empty street where our little well-traveled van resided.3
The decision wasn’t entirely surprising. Enrollment had declined steadily. With the appeal of selective enrollment and other strong public high schools in the city, even our relative bargain price of under $11,000/year and substantial scholarship possibilities struggled to move the needle in the marketplace opposite those options that come virtually free of added cost. And as families increasingly looked elsewhere and our own middle school students were admitted to these other high schools, we became a second, third, or further backup choice. It impacted our academic, behavior, and accountability standards and the overall vitality and health of the high school. So, the decision came down to phase out our high school.
And to me, that last part, is ok.
It’s only my second year at this school, so I come with a different perspective than an alumnus or a co-worker who’s been here many years and invested so much or a school family that’s sent several kids through our halls. But I could see that our standards were dropping, the community buy-in was fading, the culture was losing responsibility and accountability. We have reached a point where, despite our best efforts and intentions and energies, we are so strapped for resources and staff and especially for attention and energy that we are no longer able to responsibly prepare our students for college. So for us, phasing out our high school ministry is the responsible thing to do.4
The focus of our parish, its families, and its students is already dedicated passionately to our parish vitality and our prekindergarten-8th grade excellence, and the state of things in those areas reflects that. Similarly, the struggles of our high school reflect the way that our community is no longer invested in that ministry, so it is time to move on from it.5
To me, there is no shame in admitting that the context of our community has evolved away from high school and more deeply into other areas. The grace comes in realizing that resources would be better dedicated to other ministries and directing them to those areas accordingly. If we were in a situation where our high school students would have no other place to go, where our closing would ruin things for them, then it’d be a different story. Our high school carried unique, definite appeal for its close-knit community, diversity, and intensely attentive faculty/staff. Though this cannot be copied elsewhere, the city does have enough strong public schools, other strong Catholic schools, and plenty of options - plus the option of finishing high school here before the official closing in two years - so that families can continue giving their children a great place to grow and learn. It’s unfortunate that their high school years may no longer be on our campus, but there is peace in admitting and acknowledging this, in acting on it accordingly, and in being as responsible to our students as we can be.
Every so often, when I’d read about schools closing or parishes being consolidated, I would have a moment of sadness for the community that has lost its home, but I would pretty quickly move on to positive feelings. Now resources can be better applied. Now priests can be more sensibly allocated. Now parish budgets can support lay professionals, make space for new outreach and charity, and work together to support one great school and RE program instead of several passable ones. The moment of grief over the what was lost for a community was quickly overshadowed by the light of new possibility as those people engaged with their new normal.
So now, it’s definitely weird to be on the inside. The news stories that popped up in my feeds were about my school, the one where I worked. The email in my inbox was about my students, my co-workers, my job. My first reaction was definitely sadness; this potential decision that we had conjectured as possible was now decided and a publicly announced reality. But quickly, I settled into the reality: this was the right decision.6 Our community would lose its long held and dearly beloved tradition of its high school, but it would gain the flexibility and latitude to pour the fullness of its time, talent, and treasure, of all its great resources, into what are thriving ministries in the early childhood, elementary, and middle schools. Thinking of the image from our construction site, the community was now free to move on from that well-traveled and loved but beat up old van to the stability, security, and efficacy of these new constructions that will be great homes for so many years; now they can take that foundation and lay the floorboards, and frame the walls and roof, and furnish the rooms beautifully.
I definitely wouldn’t go so far as to say this moment is like a death. However, it felt like that older person who is trying to be too active for their age - still working when they can hardly move at a reasonable pace, still driving when their vision is going, still resisting hearing aids even though they cannot sustain conversation, still fighting medication routines and regular checkups. It felt like the moment when they finally admit that they could use that help, and in embracing it, find fuller comfort and greater happiness in life by doing so.
Renew My Church will not be an easy process for the people of God. Feelings will be hurt. Emotions will be high. There will be axes to grind. But amid the volatility and change, we have to accept the invitation to humility and remember how we are fundamentally called to be part of Someone and Something bigger than ourselves.
We come to our communities with finite money and finite time to give, but we come together for a purpose and a reason with no limits. If we are able to see beyond the boundaries of ourselves and our communities to what is best and needed by the wider Church, we will all - individually, communally, and socially - be better off for it. We must invest honestly and forthrightly in the dialogue to make sure we are heard. And in doing so, we must trust the Spirit and the leadership of our Church, of which Christ must be the Head, to move us ever closer toward our eschatological purpose of our Church to realize in its fullness the Kingdom of God.
1 This is a definite strength of our parish and school, and I’m grateful for being a part of it. I was part of faculty focus groups and specialized focus groups, and I got to participate in our School Improvement Leadership Team. I am deeply grateful to have experience in the behind-the-scenes process of self-evaluation that our school undertakes.↩
2 There was never going to be a perfect day for such significant and challenging news to be shared, so while it was tough to be off-campus for all this news, I understand it was just coincidentally challenging timing. And my students and colleagues got to do amazing stuff for these home constructions in a fruitful day of service.↩
3 I cannot imagine ministry and service without these kinds of vehicles. There’s something about the beat-up van and the goofy mini-bus that just make Campus Ministry outings feel like the family road trips that they are called to be.↩
4 High school education is so important, and frankly, the reason I am a Campus Minister is because of the immense and lasting impact of my high school formation. However, we have reached a smallness that makes it nearly impossible to sustain any kind of curricular, extracurricular, athletic, or ministerial programming, and the lack of accountability when their is no competition for any participation or privileges makes it profoundly difficult to sustain things.↩
5 In sort of a weird twist of fate, the school became a victim of its own success. The PreK-8 program prepared students so well for high school that they got into selective public and elite Catholic high schools at amazing rates and (quite blamelessly) chose them over staying with us. In some ways, we went from being college prep to high school prep, and in the future PreK-8 only era, the school can do that with even greater intensity than it already does.↩
6 Great note from our resident Jesuit, Dave: “When Ignatius was asked what he would do if the Pope decided to dissolve the Society, he said that he would need 15 minutes to compose himself before moving on. Indifference is a tricky thing, indeed.”↩
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