Since the Archdiocese of Chicago announced plans to shutter six schools at the end of the 2025-26 academic year, parents like Alicia Ferro, whose two children attend St. Jerome Catholic School in Armour Square, are scrambling to keep their school open.
But according to the archdiocese, the window to save their schools has passed — and its decision to close the schools is final. That leaves parents at St. Jerome and another school, Sts. Bruno and Richard School in Archer Heights, insisting they were blindsided.
At St. Jerome, some parents say they weren’t told the school closure was on the horizon, before the archdiocese’s Jan. 22 announcement. “Parents were never given the opportunity to get these efforts put into play,” Ferro told the Tribune. “Now, you’re just here scrambling — trying to figure out what you’re going to do with your kids. They basically tied your hands.”
The archdiocese, however, maintains that it fulfilled its responsibility to inform school officials of potential closures. While the archdiocese doesn’t directly communicate with families, school and parish officials do, according to Scott McDonald, a spokesperson for the archdiocese.
Specifically, at St. Jerome, the archdiocese had been in discussions with the church parish and school administrators for more than a year, McDonald said in an email to the Tribune last week.
The archdiocese made school officials aware of the schools’ dire situations at the start of this school year, said Greg Richmond, superintendent of schools for the archdiocese, in an interview with the Tribune.
But somewhere along the line, the communication chain from the archdiocese to parish and school officials, and then to parents, failed, according to Ferro and other parents at the shuttering schools who spoke to the Tribune.
By the time the archdiocese announced the school closures last month, some parents said it was the first time they’d heard the schools were at risk of closing. They say they should’ve been made aware long ago and are wondering who let them down: the archdiocese, school officials or both. Now the future of their children’s education is in limbo, parents said, and they are concerned about the accessibility of Catholic education.
Jessica Tellez, a parent with two children at St. Jerome, said she regularly attended school board meetings last academic year and does not recall hearing of a potential school closure.
“That was never a topic. They never sent out any letters,” Tellez said. “It was never a discussion in the meetings. It was never provided to the parish community.”
The Tribune’s requests for comment from St. Jerome’s principal, Mary Hyland and the parish pastor, the Rev. Antonio Musa, were unanswered at press time.
School closure conversations typically occur between the archdiocese and school administrators like the principal, pastor, school board and financial council, McDonald said.
From there, the archdiocese said it allows the school administrators to decide how, when and what they communicate to the broader school community.
Susana Alvarez, whose children attend Sts. Bruno and Richard said the earliest warning that the school was in trouble came in November — just over a month before the January deadline — leaving families little time to find solutions. Four of Alvarez’s six children now attend the school, after the older two graduated.
A November letter obtained by the Tribune informed Sts. Bruno and Richard families that enrollment had fallen below 180 students in the current school year — “a 16% decrease from last year and 35% drop from the 2022-23 school year.” It also highlighted the school’s $586,000 deficit.
“Given this year’s lower enrollment and depletion of one-time supports, we are not able to cover essential expenses, such as health insurance, salaries, and other operating costs, without outside assistance,” the letter said.
Leveraging her professional experience as a chief financial officer, Alvarez said she moved swiftly to create an operational plan outlining new funding sources and marketing strategies, which she said the principal, Mary Arevalo, presented to the archdiocese in early January. Arevalo did not return requests for comment by press time, and the archdiocese declined to address the circumstances of specific schools.
But the school’s deficit overshadowed the proposal, Alvarez said. Just weeks later, families at Sts. Bruno and Richard learned they were on the list of schools being closed.
The news devastated Alvarez, who has been part of the school community since 2010 and leaned heavily on the community when her husband passed away five years ago.
The closure means Alvarez’s children will face their second school transition in nearly four years. St. Bruno merged with St. Richard in 2022 after a parish consolidation.
“The parents are devastated,” Alvarez said. “We don’t want to go anywhere else. We love our school. … This is the second time we would have to now find a new school to go to.”
After learning of the archdiocese’s decision in January, Idalia Navar, whose two children also attend Sts. Bruno and Richard, wishes school families had been warned a year in advance. “I do think they should have prepared us better if this was the plan for the school,” Navar said. “You know, this is affecting everyone — the kids, the teachers, the staff members.”
The archdiocese maintains that conversations with parish and school officials about Sts. Bruno and Richard being at risk of closure occurred more than a year ago.
Despite the finality of the school closures, both school communities are drafting plans to overturn the decision — and Alvarez said she will fight until the end to do so. Sts. Bruno and Richard parents launched a Donorbox last month, which has a goal of $1 million. By press time Monday, $4,501 had been raised.
“I choose to keep my faith and keep fighting,” Alvarez said. “We are going to do everything we can to raise the funds.”
The archdiocese’s vision moving forward is to reverse declining enrollment trends and ensure that Catholic education remains accessible, Richmond said.
But Ferro questioned how that vision aligns with the closures and the instability families now face. “What’s going to happen is the reverse, where people are now considering, ‘Do I send my child to Catholic school?’” she said.
If efforts to overturn the decision to close Sts. Bruno and Richard are unsuccessful, Alvarez said she is already considering a future for her children that does not involve Catholic school.
“I would not put my kid in another Catholic school, nor will I put them in CPS either — so they would have to be homeschooled,” Alvarez said. “Because we are not gonna do this every year.”
For now, Ferro is uncertain what’s ahead for her children’s education.
Although she teaches in Chicago Public Schools, Ferro said she wants her children to receive the Catholic education she had. With St. Jerome closing, her CPS options are limited, she added, because the application deadline for the districts’ elementary choice schools has passed.
While the archdiocese said no additional school closures are planned, Richmond acknowledged that circumstances can change quickly. The archdiocese, which is affiliated with 179 Catholic schools in the Chicago area, prefers that schools have around 220 to 240 students enrolled, he said, and fewer than 200 is a cause for concern.
Enrollment data for the current school year for both St. Jerome and Sts. Bruno and Richard are not publicly available. The number of schools currently below the archdiocese’s 200-student threshold was not readily available. During the 2024-25 school year, St. Jerome had 114 students and Sts. Bruno and Richard had 191, according to the Illinois State Board of Education, the only publicly available data.
If enrollment is a deciding factor in whether schools are at risk of closure, Tellez, the St. Jerome parent, worries that down the line, there will be fewer and fewer choices for students to obtain a Catholic education. “So, it’s concerning and makes it seem like there won’t be very many left as the years go by if that’s going to be the criteria,” Tellez said.
The archdiocese feels the impact of each closure alongside families, Richmond said.
“Any school closes, we also feel that loss,” he said. “Not nearly to the extent that the parents do at those schools, but it’s a sad day for us as well.”
