After nearly a century in Oak Park, St. Edmund School, 200 S. Oak Park Ave., is closing its doors — and this time there doesn’t seem to be an encore in the works.
In 2005, the venerable institution was on the brink of closing before a sudden infusion of donations and a mad dash to satisfy a series of performance benchmarks imposed by the Archdiocese of Chicago brought it back.
No such Hail Mary efforts seem imminent after the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Catholic Schools announced last week that the pre-K through 8 school would close at the end of the 2015-16 academic year in June.
“St. Edmund School has been affected by declining enrollment and fiscal difficulties in recent years,” according to the Jan. 13 statement released by the Catholic Schools office. “School leadership, the school community and the Archdiocese have worked hard to restore the school to viability. However, despite best efforts, finances and enrollment have not improved.”
Attempts to contact the school and St. Edmund Parish officials about financial and enrollment information were unsuccessful. A Wednesday Journal reporter who attended an informational meeting held last week at the school was told to leave.
When it announced the initial closing in 2005, the school cited many of the same factors listed by the archdiocese this year — declining enrollments, a nearly $200,000 deficit and outstanding archdiocese loans.
At the time, Rev. John McGivern, St. Edmund’s pastor, said about half of the school’s 165 students lived in Oak Park and River Forest. McGivern noted then that smaller families, fewer single-family homeowners in the school’s service area and a decrease in the number of nuns — once a steady source of donated teaching services — were to blame for the close call.
But the school was able to marshal donated revenue plus secure a partnership with Dominican University in River Forest to stave off shuttering its facility.
That partnership, however, ended more than three years ago when key individuals involved in the relationship either retired or left the university, according to Jessica Mackinnon, Dominican’s director of public information.
“In past years, Dominican University had partnered with St. Edmund School to provide professional development for faculty, to place student teachers in St. Edmund’s classrooms, to offer tutoring opportunities and a summer reading academy for students, and to create marketing materials,” noted a statement recently released by the university. “Such academic support was not sufficient to help offset enrollment and financial struggles, however.”
“I’m tired of this,” said Jay Bernard, a resident of Forest Park whose 6-year-old granddaughter attends St. Edmund. “I’ve been Catholic for over 68 years and I’m just sick of this. Everywhere you go, schools are closing. I was in Lake County and now down here, they’re doing the same thing.”
Bernard said her granddaughter, who is in first-grade, will be on her third Catholic school when she leaves St. Edmund. When asked where her granddaughter will enroll next year, Bernard threw up her hands.
“I have no idea,” she said, adding that she had been shocked by news of the school’s closing when she was told by school officials at the Jan. 14 informational meeting.
St. Edmund is among three Catholic schools in the Chicago Archdiocese scheduled to close this year — another wave in a decades-long decline that has been ongoing since the 1960s, according to various reports.
Part of that has to do with the increasing prevalence of charter schools, which have been growing in popularity since the 1990s.
According to a Jan. 9 Chicago Sun-Times report, Chicago-area Catholic Schools lost nearly 55,000 students between 1995 and 2014. During the same time period, charter school enrollment “in areas covered by the archdiocese” has grown to nearly 59,000.
The Archdiocese noted that it will help St. Edmund families find other Catholic schools. A bundle of brochures for Providence-St. Mel, the Catholic school in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood, were on display on a table in St. Edmund’s administrative office.
Denise (who declined to give her last name), a St. Edmund parent who lives in the Austin neighborhood, said she may end up sending her child to Providence-St. Mel. She said there’s a Catholic school near her house, but the area is too dangerous.
“My child’s not going over there,” she said. “The location is not one where I’d want my baby standing outside during a fire drill. Even though I live in Austin and I feel fine with where I live, in Chicago [the threat level varies on] a block-by-block basis.”
Natalia Barrera, a Chicago resident whose two sons have attended St. Edmund since pre-K, said students and families at the school haven’t given up hope for another last-ditch effort to stay open — even though, like Bernard, she may have gotten word of the closing a little too late.
“My oldest is in sixth grade and my younger son is in third grade. We have been part of St. Edmund School and Parish for nine years and this sad news has brought many tears to our family,” she said.
“We are a family that has grown together. Our students love their classmates and teachers. Their hearts are now broken, and they continue to think of ways in which they could help raise money and enrollment. As a parent, I too would have expected an opportunity to try to save our school before such a devastating decision was made.”
CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com