Gia Spalla had just finished getting ready for bed Tuesday on what seemed like a typical school night when her father’s phone rang. It was her high school.
When she came back downstairs, shortly after 8:45 p.m., her parents broke the devastating news: Queen of Peace, the all girls Catholic high school in Burbank she had attended for the past 3 1/2 years and loved dearly would be closing at the end of the school year. Hers would be the final graduating class. Her younger sister Jenna, a freshman at Queen of Peace, would be forced to transfer.
“I’m just like ‘Oh, this has got to be some sort of joke,'” said Gia, standing outside the school after dismissal Wednesday with her sister and father, Louie Spalla. “But no, it’s actually happening.”
News that the school, established in 1962 by the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters, would close at term’s end sent shock waves through the tight-knit Queen of Peace community.
Students, parents and alumni were caught by surprise. There had been no warning, they said. The school had just appointed a new principal on Jan. 4 and held an entrance exam for the class of 2021 on Jan. 14.
“Total surprise,” Heidi Gutierrez, the parent of a junior student, said, describing her reaction. “I told my daughter, ‘Our NCIS skills did not work.’ We did not see any clues.”
Multiple parents, students and alumni said they knew the school had been bleeding students for years and surmised that closing, as many area Catholic schools have done in recent years, was not out of the question. Still, there had been no funding or enrollment ultimatums or even discussions of the subject, they said.
“Certainly parents were aware that it was a small school, we knew that going into it,” said Bridget Carey, of Burbank, the mother of a sophomore student. “But we’d always been given the feeling that things were fine, that we needed to work hard to keep it going, but it wasn’t in jeopardy of closing. Without any indication ahead of time that this was going to happen, it was a complete shock.”
The school, which was built to accommodate 1,400 students but currently enrolls just 288, released a statement Tuesday night about the decision to close, just minutes after putting out the automated call to parents.
“The financial realities and declining enrollment over the past 10 years make it impossible to sustain a superior four-year academic experience for the bright and deserving young women of Chicago’s South Side,” Queen of Peace president Anne O’Malley said in the statement. “As a result, the Board of Directors, with approval of the Sponsor’s Council and the Sinsinawa Dominican Congregation, have determined that the school will discontinue operations as of June 2017.”
The statement thanked donors and supporters, but noted the school’s failure to raise the money necessary to ensure its continued operation. Parents and alumni lamented that they only learned of the school’s dire financial situation after it was too late to help, and discussions about raising money to keep the school open proliferated on social media.
Those dreams were dashed Wednesday morning, however, during a meeting for parents and students at the school, attendees said.
“It seems like it’s pretty much a situation where they don’t see any way to rectify it or change it,” said Carey, who attended the meeting and added the primary topic of conversation was the lack of forewarning provided to families. “It’s pretty inevitable that it’s going to close.”
The coup de grace, she said, may have been low turnout at the recent entrance exam for prospective students.
“From what it sounded like, the board of directors, administration had been concerned about this for a while, but they had not really ever said anything to us,” Carey said. “But the last entrance exam the numbers were so low that that was kind of the final straw that made the decision.”
Queen of Peace’s president did not return a request for comment Wednesday on the decision to shutter the school.
In its prior statement, she said the school had formed a transition team to help underclassmen with the transfer process and that personalized recommendations would be provided to students based on academics, extra-curricular activities and interests.
Two school fairs will be held for students and parents to meet with representatives of Archdiocese schools, and a transition fund will help students who need financial assistance to continue their Catholic education elsewhere.
Students and faculty for the most part eschewed classes on Wednesday and spent the day reflecting on their time at Queen of Peace and mourning its closure, Gia Spalla said.
On Friday after school, families are invited to meet with faculty and administrators about the individualized transfer process for underclassmen, she said.
Gutierrez, whose daughter Genesis, a junior, chose Queen of Peace for its small, intimate class sizes and community atmosphere, said her daughter was frustrated about the looming transfer.
Rather than being able to focus on the college trips she’s been planning for the summer, she’ll first need to figure out where she’s going to spend her senior year of high school, Gutierrez said of her daughter.
“Now, our only options really are Marist and Mother McAuley, and she doesn’t like how big they are and how she’s just a number. So, that’s going to be our biggest challenge,” she said. “At Queen of Peace, you’re a name and every teacher knows your name and you know every student.”
Gia Spalla, who is making a transition of her own this fall when she heads off to Columbia College to study English and Drama, said she could only describe the impending closure of her beloved high school as “utterly heartbreaking.”
“This is the first school I’ve ever felt comfortable at coming from a background of bullying and all that other stuff,” she said, lamenting that no future student would receive the school’s coveted “Woman of Peace” award, given to the young woman who best exemplifies the school’s values.
“I had teachers here who constantly asked me if I was OK. I had friends here who were always just there by my side to support me if anything they thought was wrong,” she continued. “You never feel alone here, at all. Even people you don’t know will come up to you and ask you how your day is going. And the teachers are all very interactive, they’ll talk to you in the hallway, they’ll ask you about your plans and stuff like that.
“It’s something that I don’t think you’ll ever find anywhere else.”
Twitter @ZakKoeske
