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Published: March 9, 2010

No end to the trend

After more than 60 years in operation, Catholic school in San Francisco shutting its doors

St. Elizabeth Catholic School in San Francisco, founded in 1949 by the Sisters of the Presentation, will be closing its doors at the end of the current academic year, making it the fourth Kindergarten-8th grade Catholic school in the archdiocese to close in the last 10 years.

A story in the March 5 edition of Catholic San Francisco, the archdiocesan newspaper, said the closure was the result of “declining enrollment and growing debt.”

Parents and staff learned of plans to shutter the school at a Feb. 24 meeting, described on the school’s website as a “State of the School Meeting.” Maureen Huntington, superintendent of schools for the archdiocese, who attended the meeting, explained the reasons for the decision in a letter to parents, students, staff, alumni and supporters of the school.

“A four-year effort to reverse the enrollment decline at St. Elizabeth fell short, Huntington said in a letter to the school community,” Catholic San Francisco reported. “?Current enrollment at the K-8 school is 132 and was expected to fall to 120 next year, she wrote.”

“That continued erosion and the resulting loss of revenue would have put St. Elizabeth more than 100 students below the 225 benchmark for a K-8 school’s long-term financial health,” said Catholic San Francisco. “St. Elizabeth last came close to that level five years ago, when it enrolled 217.”

“The efforts of many over the past four years have not resulted in the changes hoped for or expected,” Huntington said in the letter cited by the archdiocesan newspaper. “We are at the point where the financial resources have been depleted.”

Over the last 10 years, the archdiocese has lost three other schools: St. Paul of the Shipwreck and St. Emydius in San Francisco, and Mater Dolorosa in Daly City, Catholic San Francisco reported.

In a March 3 letter to families with students at St. Elizabeth, principal Gene Dabdoub noted, “Everyone in the St. Elizabeth Community is experiencing a myriad of feelings at this time.”

Last month, California Catholic Daily reported that Resurrection Academy in Fontana (San Bernardino diocese) was struggling to stay open in the face of large drops in enrollment. The academy must enroll at least 20 more students “to avoid financial insolvency,” the diocesan newspaper Inland Catholic BYTE reported.

Other Catholic schools in California have also faced plummeting enrollment and undertaken efforts to recruit new students. In December 2009, Jesuit High School in Sacramento, which describes itself as “one of the top private high schools in the country,” began advertising in newspapers and on the radio in a campaign to attract new students.

In January 2009, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary announced it was closing Loretto High, a college preparatory school for girls that had operated in Sacramento since 1955. “Enrollment at the all-girls school numbered 560 students three years ago, but had fallen to 389 students this year,” said the announcement of the closing.

The Sacramento Bee published a story in February 2009 revealing the extent of the problem at Catholic schools in the Sacramento diocese. For example, the newspaper reported, at St. Patrick School in Sacramento, “which has educated students since 1932, enrollment has dropped 64 percent in the past five years. In 2003, 303 students attended the school. This year, 109 are enrolled.” Several of the other 51 schools in the diocese “have had double-digit enrollment drops in the past few years and are struggling to keep their doors open,” said the Bee.

Citing “a decade-long decline in enrollment,” the Los Angeles archdiocese announced in October 2007 that it was closing Daniel Murphy High School. In 2008, the Diocese of San Bernardino closed Precious Blood School in Banning, which served students from pre-school to the eighth grade.

According to the National Catholic Education Association, enrollment in U.S. Catholic elementary schools fell from 2,030,702 in 1997-98 to 1,647,959 in 2007-08. “Between the 2000 and the 2008 school years, there were 1,267 schools that closed (15.5%),” the NCEA reported. “The number of students declined by 382,125 (14.4 %). The most seriously impacted have been elementary schools.”

To read the full Catholic San Francisco story on the closure of St. Elizabeth School, Click Here.

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