CREVE COEUR — St. Monica Catholic School will close at the end of the academic year because of low enrollment, ºüÀêÊÓƵ Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski announced Friday.
“While providing Catholic Education in ºüÀêÊÓƵ County for more than 100 years, St. Monica School has faced ongoing challenges due to inconsistent and declining enrollment,†Rozanski said in a statement.
Fewer than 120 students are enrolled for the 2024-2025 school year, the archdiocese said.
The closure decision comes soon after St. Monica announced the hiring of Debbie Kreienkamp as principal for the 2024-2025 school year. The previous principal, Tammi Rohman, resigned April 12 “to pursue other opportunities,†according to the Sunday bulletin.
Two other Catholic grade schools, St. Roch in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and Little Flower in Richmond Heights, will also close this year. Three schools closed in 2023 because of low enrollment: Good Shepherd in Hillsboro, St. Mark in south ºüÀêÊÓƵ County and St. Rose in Florissant.
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The local Catholic school system is financially unsustainable with too many buildings for not enough students, church leaders have said. Enrollment in the 82 archdiocesan grade schools is below 65% capacity.
The Rev. Sebastian Mundackal of St. Monica told his flock last fall that the school was in financial distress.
“If the people of St. Monica don’t step up and meet the short- and long-term request for funding that I am requesting, and the school closes, in 15 years, there will probably be no more St. Monica, and the 150-year tradition will come to an end,†Mundackal wrote in an October bulletin. The parish faces a $470,000 deficit this year, he wrote.
St. Monica parishioners built their first school in the early 1870s, shortly after the original brick church was dedicated, according to Post-Dispatch archives. The one-room schoolhouse initially served 32 students who each paid tuition of 75 cents a month. The parish and the school paralleled the growth of the suburbs, and by 1963, the school had 710 students.
Catholic schools face the same headwinds as public and other private schools, mainly a longstanding decline in birth rates. There are now about 19,000 students — down from 40,000 in 2000 — in kindergarten through eighth grade across the archdiocese, which covers ºüÀêÊÓƵ and 10 counties in eastern Missouri. More than half of the archdiocesan schools have fewer than 200 students, considered a benchmark for viability.
The archdiocese’s “All Things New†restructuring process led to the closures of 35 parishes and the merging of 15 others in August. School closure or merger decisions were originally to be announced in January 2023 but were pushed back a year following outcry from parishioners and parents.
In February, parish leaders from two dozen of the smaller schools were required to come up with viability plans to increase enrollment and revenues.