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Christian Brothers take over Resurrection

StormFire

Well-Known Member
Oct 18, 2012
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The order that runs De La Salle, Saint Pats, Montini, and St. Joseph is taking over Resurrection College Prep effective the 19/20 school year. Resurrection is running out of nuns. Pats is only a few miles away, and both are opposite single gender schools. However, there is no plan to merge the schools and both will continue to operate independently. Both schools have great facilities.
 
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If Resurrection is in trouble I hope they can keep the school on track. Resurrection has been around for a long time. I hope the Brothers have a good plan for the school. I am not sure about DeLasalle and STP, but Montini has lost quite a few students in the past 10 years and STJ is on its last legs.
 
If Resurrection is in trouble I hope they can keep the school on track. Resurrection has been around for a long time. I hope the Brothers have a good plan for the school. I am not sure about DeLasalle and STP, but Montini has lost quite a few students in the past 10 years and STJ is on its last legs.

Res is in OK / good shape. They have around 500+ girls. And Pats is doing fine too. This actually would give both schools the opportunity to support smaller language or arts programs by splitting teachers if they want to go that route. But both are more than capable of standing on their own for quite some time. Barring a sudden drop they should both be good for years to come.

I always thought the brothers gave up on Driscoll a little bit too early, but they really are holding on at Saint Joe’s and they’re doing great work with some charter schools in the city.

Now to bring this back to football, if in the far future they ever had to combine Resurrection has plenty of land for a football stadium. But darn it Pats has the pool.
 
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I think this is interesting from a couple of perspectives.

The first is that you have an order of religious brothers taking over an all-girls school and stating that they are going to run/sponsor it as such. Imagine if a group of nuns took over running MC, Rita, or Rice. BTW, it's the same community of brothers that absorbed all-girls Lourdes HS in 2002 and immediately folded it into DLS as a single coed school with single gender campuses.

Perhaps someone from the Notre Dame College Prep community can chime in here, but doesn't that community consider Res to be a sister school of sorts? If not officially, then unofficially and at certain levels? There's a combined NDCP and RHS marching band, for example. Girls from Res are on the cheerleading squad at NDCP. A lot of northwest side families that send daughters to Res send sons to NDCP. What is going to happen with that relationship? How is the potential ending of that relationship going to impact enrollment at both schools?
 
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Res has seen a very steep decline in enrollment in the last decade. With the Christian Brothers taking over Res, I view it as a long term possible plan to move Pat's up to the Norwood Park/Edison Park campus probably to become a Co-Ed school. I believe Pat's plays some sports there and I am sure that they would LOVE to put a football/baseball/soccer complex there as well
 
Res has seen a very steep decline in enrollment in the last decade. With the Christian Brothers taking over Res, I view it as a long term possible plan to move Pat's up to the Norwood Park/Edison Park campus probably to become a Co-Ed school. I believe Pat's plays some sports there and I am sure that they would LOVE to put a football/baseball/soccer complex there as well

If they become a coed school on one campus, then they will compete on the northside in the Catholic coed space with Ignatius, Fenwick, Loyola, DePaul, Guerin, Holy Trinity, Viator, etc. Not sure that is the right move for them. Right now, they have the all-boys space on the northside of Chicago to themselves, although they do share that space with NDCP in Niles, which draws students substantially from the north and northwest sides of the city...along with Pat's.

More likely, I see Pat's eventually doing what their sponsoring Lasallian Christian Brothers did with Lourdes by becoming a single coed school with two single gender campuses. This would allow them to achieve some economies of scale while maintaining a large part of the single gender character and traditions of both schools. They could do that and still put in the sports complex you talk about. However, I think it is important to bear in mind that all that land that Res sits on (plus the open land east of there along Talcott) belongs to the Res Sisters. I don't believe we know what the ownership disposition of that land is relative to this agreement to change the sponsorship of Res from the sisters to the brothers.

I think the recent decline in enrollment at Res has been due, in part, to ongoing turnover and problems within the educational leadership levels of the school. If the brothers can settle that down, then perhaps that enrollment decline can be turned around.
 
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Ramblin,

Pats takes a good chunk of kids from the NW side and surrounding suburbs already. Maybe not as far reaching north as some parishes, but I'm sure kids from Julianas, Tars, Eugene, Thecla, and Monica are making there way to Austin and Belmont. I know Celestine and Vincents, from Elmwood Park and River Forest, send a good amount of kids to St.Pats.

I think Pats/Res Coed Campuses would be beneficial in the longrun if Pats ever decided it wanted to become a Coed institution
 
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I wonder if the Christian Brothers would be interested in taking over any other Catholic schools in northern Illinois?
 
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