Freeport Aquin closes
- Thread starter crazylegs777
- Start date
All.... Tough to stay open with that kind of enrollmnent. Boylan by the way on the right road is 29.8 miles away. Football players if your not on the far side of town go for it! Ratsy
https://www.mystateline.com/news/freeport-catholic-high-school-closes-due-to-
shrinking-enrollment/
https://www.mystateline.com/news/freeport-catholic-high-school-closes-due-to-
shrinking-enrollment/
It sucks to hear news like that. You feel for the staff, the students, and the alumni.
Not everyone knows how this feels, but I have gone through this personally.
People may not agree but schools closing is always sad to see..
Not everyone knows how this feels, but I have gone through this personally.
People may not agree but schools closing is always sad to see..
Literally nothing left now since they tore down the buildings. Just new town homes/condos. Such a shame.
Rockford Boylan enrollments numbers (actual students without adding any multiplier)
2011 —1,185 (team was unbeaten state champs I believe in 2010)
2019 & 2020 seasons — 875
2023 & 2024 seasons — 673
Freeport Aquin enrollments numbers (actual students without adding any multiplier)
2018 & 2019 seasons — 107
2023 & 2024 seasons— 81 (and now, obvously there won't be a 2024 season)
Marian Central in Woodstock has a current enrollment count without any multiplier of 389.
In 2010, the Hurricanes' enrollment was I believe 734.
All.... That is part of it. Overall families aren't having as many kids and there is a trend for some not having any due to changes in society "thinking."
Enrollment for Sacred Heart-Griffin at the high was around 875 many years ago. The lowest a few years back 499. A small uptick with new "management" in 2023 around 525. I will be interested to see what 2024 brings.
The Springfield area has challenges for the diocese. Six Catholic grades schools and a single Catholic high school one would still assume healthy enrollment numbers.
Not so. With Williamsville, Rochester, and Chatham surrounding the town people are moving out of Springfield to these communities. Now I say moving out but thoses towns have many Springfield addresses because of unique land boundries. One can get to any of those three school districts within ten minutes or so.
Springfield public school district 186 has three high schools in the city. They continue to get a bad rap. So those who don't go the private route in town bug out. Springfield is a destination town with it being the capitol of the state. A large medical community, state employment , and the city itself providing good paying jobs. Lots of money in town. So moving out is not a big deal to surrounding communities that are close enough to be called suburbs. And all that Springfield provides produces rock solid enrollments to those three. Heck when a nice house goes up for sale in Rocket land it can be a dog fight on who gets it first. Not suprising one common denominator the three share are outstanding athletic programs.
What gives me pause as I shake my head is I have known many of those parents over the years that have made the move. Willing to pay much much more purchasing a house right outside of town but not willing to go the private route because school is not "free." When even the economics show it would be cheaper going with a private school.
This is what SHG has to contend it.... Ratsy P.S. Chatham has really changed with aggressive apartment complex growth. Much of it affordable with program assistance. Route 4 is showing a lot traffic heading that way.
Private school enrollment decline is like death from a thousand cuts.
When a school is healthy enough to absorb the cuts, it doesn't think about them much, as they are nothing more than signs to be heeded. A healthy private school that thinks in terms of the next ten years, and not just next year, is always taking steps to ensure its good health. Loyola, Ignatius, and Benet come to mind here.
A school that has sustained several years of declines and starts to feel weak is when it needs to take strong measures to stop the bleeding. A good example of this is Laurence.
Once a school can't stop the bleeding and keeps incurring cuts, it is in existential danger of reaching a point of no return which will occur regardless of what it does to try to turn themselves around. Literally dozens of examples of this in the Chicago metro area, unfortunately. Most schools that reach that brink wind up going under. Some of them reach that brink and tread water for years, becoming shadows of their former selves.
In recent years, I can't think of any Chicago area private school that has reached the brink of closure only to turn themselves around and become much larger and healthy. If you pressed me for one, I would say Ignatius. Many people don't realize or remember that Ignatius was thisclose to closing back in the mid/late 70s. It got new leadership, went coed, amped up its alumni donor base, and became a great turnaround story in relatively short order. BUT, I think they are pretty much the exception to the rule.
When a school is healthy enough to absorb the cuts, it doesn't think about them much, as they are nothing more than signs to be heeded. A healthy private school that thinks in terms of the next ten years, and not just next year, is always taking steps to ensure its good health. Loyola, Ignatius, and Benet come to mind here.
A school that has sustained several years of declines and starts to feel weak is when it needs to take strong measures to stop the bleeding. A good example of this is Laurence.
Once a school can't stop the bleeding and keeps incurring cuts, it is in existential danger of reaching a point of no return which will occur regardless of what it does to try to turn themselves around. Literally dozens of examples of this in the Chicago metro area, unfortunately. Most schools that reach that brink wind up going under. Some of them reach that brink and tread water for years, becoming shadows of their former selves.
In recent years, I can't think of any Chicago area private school that has reached the brink of closure only to turn themselves around and become much larger and healthy. If you pressed me for one, I would say Ignatius. Many people don't realize or remember that Ignatius was thisclose to closing back in the mid/late 70s. It got new leadership, went coed, amped up its alumni donor base, and became a great turnaround story in relatively short order. BUT, I think they are pretty much the exception to the rule.
I would say the re-branding of Gordon Tech to DePaul saved its lineage.
Good call. I agree, and I would put Gordon/DePaul Prep in the same category as Laurence as an example of being in that trajectory/stage of enrollment decline where they took steps before they were at the brink of closure. Maybe Gordon took those steps a little later than Laurence in that downward trajectory.
I don't know enough about the Gordon situation to be 100% confident, but I suspect their turnaround happened not so much because they were on the brink of closure and more because their sponsoring religious community (Congregation of the Resurrection) wanted out of the secondary education ministry. When the Resurrectionists identified a willing partner in DePaul, it was the resulting new leadership that took the necessary steps to rebrand and market themselves more effectively.
I would say Wheaton Saint Francis has done a good job of investing in the school and seemingly being in a good spot right now. They were not in any sort of trouble but they got out ahead.
...which is exactly what a healthy enrollment allows forward-thinking private schools to do.
Unfortunately, many private schools are not like that at all, and find themselves living hand-to-mouth. For them, it requires a herculean effort simply to keep their heads above water. This forces them to be more reactive and less proactive. It's tough to plan and make expenditures for the next 5, 10, 15 years when enrollment is dwindling, and the school is supremely challenged to manage a shrinking cash flow, make the monthly payroll, and pay its vendors.
I'm aware of a private school that recently cancelled an away spring sports contest a few weeks ago because it was "unable to find a bus to charter." Okay, CPS can't find enough school bus drivers to take all its students back and forth to school, so perhaps it's a supply and demand issue, right? Wrong. The host school actually called their usual bus company to see if it had any busses and drivers available as that host school was willing to pay for the charter to bring the other school's team to their school for the game. The bus company told the host school that it wouldn't do business with the other school because of all the unpaid bills it has incurred.
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I lived down the street from St.Laurence. One thing that extended the life of Queen Of Peace was the closure of Mt.Assisi but then QOP closed. I’m glad they turned things around. But the people at St.Laurence years ago hoped they would put Central all the way thru something talked about since the 70’s. They thought that would bring more kids in. Back then as it is now the Belt Railway is where it stops around 70th Central.
I, too, would be curious to see those stats. I highly doubt they exist anywhere in the format you want.
You, can, though, find limited enrollment data on football playing private schools on the IHSA website, but it would take a sh!t ton of work to compile for those schools for the past 20 years
Take Immaculate Conception, for example. If you go into the records and history section of the IHSA football pages, you can find what their enrollment was as far back as the 1996 season. Just pull up the IC schedule for that season, and you can see their enrollment listed at 697.43. Divide that number by the 1.65 multiplier, and you get 423. If you see a school that has a fractional enrollment number, you know it has been multiplied. Whole number enrollments have not been multiplied.
I can really only speak on enrollment for the private school I attended and support.
QND has really plateaued in recent years around the 380 actual enrollment mark. Up some years, down a few the next. When I graduated in 2007 we had around 430 I believe. When my mother graduated in 1978 they had over 700 kids. I know when my childhood neighbors were in high school in the 90s QND was still above the 500 line. It's been a decline that's for sure.
I would venture to say enrollment is down quite a bit at many if not all private football playing schools in central Illinois. We also know COVID derailed one program in the QC... RIP Alleman Football... FUQ Western Big Five
QND has really plateaued in recent years around the 380 actual enrollment mark. Up some years, down a few the next. When I graduated in 2007 we had around 430 I believe. When my mother graduated in 1978 they had over 700 kids. I know when my childhood neighbors were in high school in the 90s QND was still above the 500 line. It's been a decline that's for sure.
I would venture to say enrollment is down quite a bit at many if not all private football playing schools in central Illinois. We also know COVID derailed one program in the QC... RIP Alleman Football... FUQ Western Big Five
The vast majority of Illinois public and private schools are currently experiencing enrollment declines. This decline has definitely hit private schools more severely. Between 2011-2021, private school enrollment dropped by 27% from 241k to 177k, while public school enrollment declined by 10% from 2.099 million to 1.888 million (Source: Illinois State Bd of Education data). In the early days of the CS8 conference, Jacksonville, Lincoln, and Taylorville (all public schools) had enrollments of between 1,100-1,200. They have now fallen to between 760-940.
Each of these communities lost population as manufacturing closed or moved away. Development center closed in Jacksonville and schools of both blind and deaf are smaller. Taylorville had many coal mines in the area that have all closed. It seemed about every few years a factory was closing or greatly downsizing in Lincoln.
Decatur at one time had 4 public high schools. MacArthur, Eisenhower, Stephen Decatur and Lakeview.
If only they had the playoffs as we know them now back in the day. The last season Lakeview had a hell of a football team & not a bad one the year before. And then there was that one season the Cairo Pilots would have been in
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