St. Katharine Drexel Academy parents found out in the fall that they needed to raise half a million dollars and recruit dozens more students in order to keep the doors open another year
St. Katharine Drexel Academy opened in 2018 to serve almost 200 students who needed a new school. This was after two other schools that also struggled with enrollment, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and Blessed Sacrament, closed.
Seven years later, St. Katharine is closing, too, its enrollment falling below 100 students.
"I'm not sure if chaotic is the right word, but we were thrown into a chaotic position," parent Steve Carter said.
Carter leads a parents and teachers' group that did everything it could think of to save the school, from organizing fundraising events to canvassing the neighborhood with flyers. Carter even started a GoFundMe to try to raise the $500,000 the school needed.
Parents also needed to recruit 30 students.
"Schools around here have been trying to get 30-plus students enrolled for six years," Carter said. "And we were given less than six months. So it was just almost an impossible task."
Parents raised a little more than $12,000 and didn't find any more students.
Tuition this school year was $6,850 per student. Carter said that, for a lot of parents, that isn't affordable.
"We happen to live in a lower-income area," Carter said, "and the tuition is not reflective of the lower-income area."
Kevin Eckery, a spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of San Diego, which runs St. Katharine, said budget was also a factor, since the diocese filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in June in the wake of more than 450 legal claims made against it by sexual abuse victims.
However, Eckery said, the budget challenges pale in comparison to the enrollment issue. He said if there were enough students enrolled (the goal was 200), St. Katharine would be staying open.
"Regardless of how great of a school it's been -- I mean, with great families and great students and great teachers -- but it just hasn't had enough students to pay for itself," Eckery said.
When the school closes in June, Carter's fifth-grade daughter will transfer to St. Martin of Tours, but while school's still in session, he said this situation taught him one last lesson.
"Just because it's hard, it doesn't mean we give up," Carter said. "And if anything, I can hope to share with our children that you do what's right, not necessarily because of the outcome, but you do it because it's the right thing to do."
Eckery said most Catholic schools run by the diocese of San Diego are thriving. Overall, enrollment in its schools has climbed from 13,111 before the pandemic to 14,375 today, an increase of roughly 9.5%. And if pre-K enrollment is included, Catholic school enrollment countywide is more than 15,500 students.
St. Katharine parents will meet Thursday night to decide the best use for the $12,000 they were able to raise; students will receive a $1,000 credit to put toward tuition at another school of their choosing.