<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=18AqsM_0vhkPbjX00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=18AqsM_0vhkPbjX00" width="1763" height="1176" ><figcaption>Illustration by Campbell Biemiller/Missouri Business Alert</figcaption></figure>Beth Bartolotta first became a principal at St. Justin Martyr in Sunset Hills in 2007, during a time when there were few principals available. St. Justin was experiencing a dip in enrollment after the school had received an influx of students from a merger with St. Elizabeth of Hungary just three years prior.“You can't save it, Beth," Bartolotta recalled the former principal saying to her on the way out.And yet, nine years after she accepted the position as principal of St. Justin, the school reported its highest enrollment in 40 years.In transitioning to the role of principal at St. Francis of Assisi in Oakville in 2017, Bartolotta found herself in a similar position to the one she had been in almost a decade prior at St. Justin; enrollment had been on the decline for several years, and rumors of school closure were circulating. St. Francis, like St. Justin, siphoned a number of students from a nearby school closing. However, that temporary influx was at odds with broader enrollment trends, which make the threat of closure something many Catholic elementary school administrators, like Bartolotta, cannot seem to escape.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1rtfVa_0vhkPbjX00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1rtfVa_0vhkPbjX00" width="1050" height="1500" ><figcaption>Beth Bartolotta | Courtesy photo</figcaption></figure>As the population ages and fewer children are born in St. Louis, the Archdiocese of St. Louis has observed fewer baptisms and fewer children being enrolled in Catholic schools over the past two decades. Catholic schools in the archdiocese saw enrollment drop about 58% between 2001 and 2019, with a nearly 44% drop occurring from 2009 to 2019, according to a brief from researchers at the Saint Louis University School of Education.Recent decreases in enrollment in St. Louis Catholic schools resemble enrollment trends in other dioceses nationwide. The number of students enrolled in Catholic schools across the country has decreased 37%, from about 2.7 million in 1999 to about 1.7 million in 2019, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Catholic Educational Association. For the past school year, there were about 20,600 students enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade across 96 Catholic elementary schools in the St. Louis area, according to the archdiocese. Costs to educate dwindling numbers of students outpace tuition increases, forcing parishes to invest an increasing percentage of their funds that might otherwise be allocated elsewhere, according to 2023 data from the archdiocese.In an attempt to alleviate the issues and better allocate resources, the archdiocese started the discussion of consolidating Catholic elementary schools, said Lisa Naeger Shea, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of St. Louis. This comes after the consolidation of parishes, with the archdiocese opting to close and merge parishes in response to a decrease in Mass attendance and geographic shift in the area's overall and Catholic populations, Naeger Shea said. The schools attached to parishes closing or merging would not immediately be impacted; instead, the Office of Catholic Education and Formation would work alongside parishes to determine their futures, according to an archdiocese FAQ page.Declining church attendance and a shortage of priests served as driving factors for the parish consolidations, Naeger Shea said. More than a third of the priests serving in St. Louis-area parishes are 65 or older, and these priests are anticipated to retire within the next 10 years, according to the diocese.Parish consolidations were made by archdiocesan leadership and announced through decrees by Archbishop Mitchell Ronzanski in May 2023 — the same weekend as the Catholic feast of Pentecost. Last fall, high-level priests and representatives of the Office of Education and Formation met with about two dozen pastors to discuss the viability of their parish schools. These pastors were asked to submit recommendations of whether to close their schools or keep them open for the 2024-2025 school year by last December, and all hoping to remain open were asked to submit long-term feasibility plans to the archdiocese by February 2024.The Business Brief podcast on St. Louis Catholic schools' financesThree schools were approved for closure after the 2023-2024 school year: The Little Flower School in Richmond Heights, St. Roch School in St. Louis and St. Monica in Creve Coeur. When the plan was first introduced, Catholics of the archdiocese expected the consolidation of schools to be more sweeping than it has been thus far, Naeger Shea said. Although one-third of parish elementary schools under the archdiocese were projected to be at risk of closure, further consultations and recommendations were pushed back due to the lack of recommendations coming in, according to a September 2023 press release.<h2>Business model challenges</h2>Richard Kruska has worked as the superintendent of Catholic schools in Oakland, California, and Bismarck, North Dakota, and as a senior executive in the telecommunications industry, and he wrote a doctoral thesis on financial models in Catholic education. Kruska has studied transformation of the Catholic education model as early as the 1950s, when laypeople were replacing nuns as teachers.“The sisters were basically free labor. … They didn't really cost much to teach, and they were fairly good teachers, so they were trained as educators,” Kruska said. “As they moved out, the cost of Catholic education kept going up and up and up.”To cover increasing expenses like employment costs, which became “85% of their total budget,” Catholic schools started charging higher tuition, Kruska said.Different Catholic schools have different revenue models, according to the Catholic School Playbook, an eBook by the Ortner Family Foundation detailing the practices followed by Catholic schools across America. Some Catholic schools rely on fundraising or parish support like tithing to cover as much as 80% of the budget. However, most operate under a model with tuition covering up to 85% of the budget and fundraising covering the remaining costs.Kruska thinks it’s unsustainable and attributes the issue, at least in part, to leadership issues within Catholic education systems.“Here's the price, and as our product has diminished in Catholic schools, the price keeps going up, and that's really not a sustainable business model,” Kruska said. “That's something that is gonna drive people away because we haven't found a way for Catholic education to cover those operational costs (with) something other than tuition.”In St. Louis, the archdiocese dubbed the consolidation of parishes and schools "All Things New." As part of the reorganization process, parishes were divided into 15 planning zones. The archdiocese has published financial statements for each parish and associated elementary school, keeping track of sources of revenue, expenses and subsidies, and other metrics that might help determine whether a school remains open.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3uhiCR_0vhkPbjX00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3uhiCR_0vhkPbjX00" width="1662" height="1247" ><figcaption>St. Francis of Assisi in Oakville is one of nearly 100 Catholic elementary schools in the St. Louis area. | Kyla Pehr/Missouri Business Alert</figcaption></figure>For instance, Bartolotta’s school, St. Francis, listed 233 students for the year ended June 30, 2022 in a school that can hold 450 — 52% of capacity. The school’s expenses for the year of just over $2 million exceed its revenue of about $1.6 million, according to a preliminary and unaudited financial summary.At the schools that are closing, St. Monica, Little Flower and St. Roch, expenses exceeded revenue by about $790,000, $460,000 and $220,000, respectively. “The parish funding model alone cannot handle the ongoing and necessary rising costs to educate — especially when it comes to salaries and benefits,” Bartolotta said.Through consolidation, All Things New aims to change that.On the All Things New website, the archdiocese laid out its objectives:“Our goal is to ‘make all things new’ by Gospel renewal and to enhance our evangelization to secure a vibrant future for our current students, as well as their children and grandchildren, by creating an educational model that is accessible, affordable, strong in Catholic identity, and more equitable towards our teachers.”<h2>Classroom qualms</h2>As part of the campaign, the archdiocese conducted a survey of current elementary school teachers to decide what needs should be addressed. Many teachers expressed a desire for salary increases.Estimates of pay for teachers in the archdiocese vary significantly on different job websites, with averages ranging from about $59,000 on ZipRecruiter to $48,000 on Glassdoor and about $36,000 on Indeed. Meanwhile, the average pay for a public elementary school teacher in St. Louis is about $62,000 per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.Other popular survey answers included desires for more support of teachers, smaller class sizes of no more than 20 to 25, and increased resources for teachers.During the 2018-2019 school year, the average student-teacher ratio sat at 14:1, according to the archdiocese. At St. Francis, the average K-8 ratio is 13:1, Bartolotta said.Like teachers, administrators are expressing dissatisfaction, as well. Bartolotta believes that, under the current conditions, “it is simply impossible for Catholic school administrators — at least at the elementary level — to wear all of the hats that they must wear and to do them well.”“Like parish priests who are made to be business managers, principals are spiritual leaders, curriculum and instruction leaders, marketing leaders, discipline leaders, communications leaders, leaders of supervision and professional development, and on and on,” Bartolotta said. “Then add to that the safety team, safety drills, facilities manager, substitute teacher, in my case teacher, vomit cleaner, plumber, etc. An administrative team is required if we are going to sustain our schools; that can only be afforded if we pool resources.”<h2>‘All Things New’</h2>Administrators like Bartolotta feel more can be done to support their schools.“Can the schools that are using best practices according to some national benchmarks be rewarded for doing so with some support for these resources?” Bartolotta asked.Kruska questions whether consolidation of Catholic schools is the best answer for the long term, especially if it means a continuation of the current Catholic education model.“I don't know that consolidation is the best idea; I think it's a good financial plan, but to me it is the last resort,” Kruska said. “And when people start doing that, that means they're out of ideas and they think there's nowhere to go. They go to consolidation and they go to shutting things down, and then the Catholic education pool keeps getting smaller and smaller until someday it may go away completely in some dioceses.”Kruska offered Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep — one of the 40 college preparatory schools nationwide in the Cristo Rey Network — as a sustainable model that might offer an alternative path forward for Catholic education in lower socioeconomic areas. Cristo Rey schools partner with local businesses, and students work to earn the majority of their tuition. However, because this model is geared toward older students, it likely would not work at the elementary level, Kruska said.Kruska feels letting individual parishes decide the fate of their elementary schools puts that decision “in the wrong hands.”“There are probably some of those priests that are very committed to Catholic education, they really want it to work and they have some of the education background … but that’s few and far in between,” Kruska said. “I think the wrong people are making decisions, and, oftentimes, the schools become a headache for the pastors.”“Many times the priest can be a nice bridge between the school and the faith,” Kruska added. “But most of them know nothing about education.”The Archdiocese of Los Angeles went through a consolidation process similar to St. Louis' with its elementary and middle schools after experiencing challenges with decreased enrollment and fewer priests, said Kevin Baxter, former superintendent of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.“When I hear consolidation, I think of that type of model in terms of trying to think about space differently, maybe trying to target specific grades in specific locations,” Baxter said. “And so, we did that.“With the parishes working in conjunction with the archdiocese, Catholic schools in Los Angeles tried a few different models, one of which included separating grades K-5 and 6-8 on different campuses. Baxter said the consolidation was “a mixed bag for us.”“If there's a lot of buy-in that’s sought and capacity that's built at the local level and a lot of collaboration that takes place, then I think they can be extremely successful,” Baxter said.Baxter believes the Archdiocese of St. Louis allowing parish communities to make their own decisions in the consolidation of parish elementary schools could be beneficial.Emma Smith, a former student at a Catholic elementary school under the archdiocese, is confident in the ability of these communities to rally together for their schools.“I think that, with the parish schools, it's very ingrained in tradition and there is a very strong sense of identity that develops with the schools in those neighborhoods just because they've been going on for such a long time,” Smith said. “It makes me obviously sad to hear that parish schools have to close because they have such a strong place in the neighborhoods.”Others are less confident. With parishes in charge, Bartolotta worries that St. Louis communities are unaware of the importance of Catholic elementary schools."We are an unknown treasure to many — even those who are Catholic,” Bartolotta said. “They assume that the public schools have more resources and simply ‘do school’ better. There are resources that they have that we do not, but the reverse is also true.”Despite her concerns over All Things New, Bartolotta is hopeful the plan will meet its goals and ensure that Catholic elementary successes “won't be such a secret.”“God has a plan," Bartolotta said, "and if we pray and follow his guiding spirit, perhaps these issues will save the treasure that is our Catholic schools.""If done well," she added, "they will lead the way as they did more than 200 years ago, in showing the other schools of the St. Louis region how to have success with students — especially those with most need.” </div></body>

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Facing financial challenges, St. Louis Catholic schools contemplate future

Beth Bartolotta first became a principal at St. Justin Martyr in Sunset Hills in 2007, during a time when there were few principals available. St. Justin was experiencing a dip in enrollment after the school had received an influx of students from a merger with St. Elizabeth of Hungary just three years prior.