St. Agnes School to Close, Archdiocese Confirms

St. Agnes School, the pre-K through 8th grade Catholic school of St. Agnes Parish in Clark, will close its doors for good after this school year. 

The school announced the closure to parents and to the church community over the weekend. St. Agnes was also scheduled to close in 2010, but remained open after an effort from parents to save the school and increase enrollment.

Though the archdiocese has not officially announced the closing, spokesman Jim Goodness confirmed it to Patch on Tuesday. 

"We’ve been looking at the school for a number of years and it was going to close at the end of the 2009-2010 year," Goodness told Patch. "It had then reached a low of 139 students from a high of close to 200, probably around 2003. That number has continued to lower itself. I think there are fewer than 100 students right now in grades K-8."

Goodness says the low enrollment has meant the parish has had to significantly subsidize the school. 

"Over the course of the past five years the school has reached close to two million dollars in direct subsidy," Goodness says. "It has reached a point where it became obvious to everyone that the parish could no longer continue to provide that level of support."

Goodness says while there may be 500 students in the local community and many of them attend religious education at St. Agnes, the majority of families have not elected to send their students to St. Agnes for school.  

To close a school, the parish asks the archdiocese for permission to close.

"We look at factors involved and reasons being cited," says Goodness. "It just became too clear that this was not a school that could continue without a higher subsidy, as well as probably a very large tuition increase. And we know every time we increase tutition, we tend to lose a significant amount of students."

Goodness says the archdiocese has been calling for school choice legislation to pass that would give parents the ability to chose a parochial school like St. Agnes. 

"I think a partnership with the state could be made possible but people in the legislature and elsewhere don’t want any school choice in place," says Goodness.  

Goodness says students currently enrolled at St. Agnes will have opportunities to register at another Catholic school for next year, and that St. Agnes hopes to organize a night for those schools to come talk about their programs with parents. 

"We at the school will be maintaining our rigorous curriculum for the remainder of the year," Principal Heather Schnaars wrote in an email to Patch.  "We plan on continuing to give the best education to all our students."

Pastor Dennis Cohan did not return our calls for comment.