For the girls at Guerin College Preparatory High School in River Grove, Wednesday was not only the first day of class, it was the first time there were boys in the student body.
After the all-male Holy Cross High School closed in the spring, Guerin administrators decided to go coed. By admitting hundreds of boys from the school across the driveway, Guerin nearly doubled its enrollment and began a new chapter in its 42-year history.
The number of electives was expanded, some girls’ restrooms became boys’ bathrooms and the name was changed from Mother Theodore Guerin High School.
“We were waiting on pins and needles to have 300 extra boys come into the building,” said Sister Nancy Nolan, president of Guerin Prep. “We knew we wanted to change our image to assure the young men [that they’re] not going to an all-girls school.”
The physical changes have taken hold quicker than the social and emotional adjustments that students will have to make. At lunch, tables were divided along gender lines.
“A lot of girls said they don’t want to eat in front of the guys,” said a baffled Anthony Robinson, 17, of Chicago.
And though school officials have always been strict about the dress code, they are paying special attention to student uniforms, making sure the girls wore their black pleated skirts no more than 3 inches above their knees.
“I guess the guys find that funny but with the guys, I’ve been checking to see if they have belts on,” said Principal Bonnie Brown.
Although girls and boys mingled on occasion before the merger–they came together for drama, language, music and some advanced-placement classes–this is the first time they have shared entire days.
In an advanced-placement government class Wednesday, the girls excitedly responded to questions about the U.S. Constitution without raising their hands while the boys gave an occasional answer.
“They’re louder and talk a lot more than we did,” noted senior Ryan Marino, 17, of the giggly girls in his third-period class. “We listen a lot more.”
The changes at Guerin reflect a larger trend among area Catholic schools, which are straining under falling enrollment numbers and rising operating costs.
With the opening of the new Guerin, there are 16 coed Catholic high schools in Cook and Lake Counties.
Meanwhile, 40 of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago’s elementary schools have closed in the last five years.
“There are places where the demand is not there anymore, and we will probably have some more closings,” said archdiocese schools Supt. Nicholas Wolsonovich. “We don’t have any sense of that right now, how many. But we are looking at that.”
Still, Wolsonovich pointed with pride to the performance of parochial school pupils on standardized tests.
“Certainly the students in the archdiocese of Chicago have scored well above the national average on the Terra Nova [II],” an elementary-school achievement test, Wolsonovich said.
Archdiocese officials hope to see a reversal in falling enrollment numbers and Wednesday announced the opening of an $8 million classroom building for the Old St. Patrick’s campus of the Frances Xavier Warde Schools in the Near West Side.
The three-story brick structure is the archdiocese’s first new elementary school in the city to be built since 1961, school officials said.
This is in addition to expansion and renovation projects totaling $45 million at 16 archdiocesan schools.
“The Catholic schools are opening their doors to some new and exciting developments. We have five new schools opening this year,” Wolsonovich said.
This list includes Guerin, where officials are encouraged that nearly all of the girls returned and about 95 percent of the boys decided to attend.
Ashley Groner was a bit nervous about having boys in school all day for the first time, but there was no question about attending Guerin this year.
“I wasn’t thinking about going to a different school,” she said.
