St. Francis School Shuts Down North Side Catholic School Lacks Funds To Operate Another Year

The graying of an inner-city neighborhood has forced a Spokane Catholic school out of business.

St. Francis Catholic School officials announced the closure Tuesday, four days after the North Side school let out for summer. Teachers had no opportunity to prepare students - or themselves - for the closure.

“This has been a long time coming,” said the Rev. Paul Vevik, pastor of St. Francis Xavier Church, 544 E. Providence, home to the school.

While the school’s financial troubles were common knowledge, the decision to close “came as somewhat of a shock,” Spokane Bishop William Skylstad said.

Skylstad said Vevik and St. Francis Principal Richard Winkler consulted on the matter late last week. It had become clear the school would not have enough money to operate another year, he said.

“Normally this procedure (to close a school) involves wider consultation within the diocese,” Skylstad said. St. Francis officials asked to streamline the process so the school’s five teachers and other staff members could start looking for other jobs, Skylstad said.

Teacher Sean Bailey said he didn’t get confirmation of the closure until Monday, although rumors have circulated for at least two weeks. Such rumors were common every year, he said.

“It was always a year-to-year proposition. But we had such wonderful parents and families and staff that we were able to pull through,” said Bailey, who taught at the school for six years and is scrambling to apply for District 81 teaching positions that close on Friday.

Bailey said he and other teachers were willing to take pay cuts, but were told even that step wouldn’t be enough to keep the school open.

“We always considered it a mission” to teach at St. Francis, he said.

Bailey said a good share of the students come from single-parent families and many qualify for free lunches.

The closure ends a 93-year history of Catholic education by the St. Francis Xavier and St. Francis of Assisi parishes.

For most of this century, the two parishes supported separate schools that flourished in neighborhoods filled with modest houses, many of them built for GIs returning from World War II. In the 1960s, St.

Francis Xavier alone boasted 600 students.

With the families grown, many of those same houses now hold senior citizens. Others are rented to people who don’t make a long-term commitment to the neighborhood.

With enrollment dwindling, the two schools consolidated in 1984. Enrollment has not topped 100 most years this decade, according to the Catholic Diocese of Spokane. Enrollment for the 1998-99 school year was 93 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The school was subsidized by the two parishes, which were unable to increase donations or attract enough donors to meet growing needs, Vevik said.

Tuition payments amounted to only 28 percent of the school budget, Vevik said. To remain viable, the school would need to raise more than half its budget from tuition, he said.

Excluding Gonzaga Prep, for which figures were unavailable Tuesday, attendance in the 18 diocese schools has risen 19 percent in the past decade, to about 3,400.

But while some of Spokane’s suburban schools have waiting lists for potential students, inner-city schools face declining enrollments, in Spokane and nationwide, Skylstad said.

Trinity Catholic School on the North Side faced “a very precarious situation” early this decade, Principal Mike Trudeau said. The school survived, and has seen its enrollment increase slightly, through an aggressive fund-raising effort by parents and other supporters, he said.

It costs about $3,200 annually to educate a child at Trinity, but parents of only a handful of the 138 students can afford to pay that much, Trudeau said. To help make up the difference, Trinity has turned to businesses and other supporters, who donate about $70,000, plus in-kind gifts, each year. The school also has built an endowment of about $400,000, and has benefited from bequests, Trudeau said.

Trudeau said he would welcome any students who decide to transfer from St. Francis to Trinity; in fact, his school will be open this Saturday morning for any family that wants a tour. But he made it clear that the school isn’t looking to capitalize on the demise of St. Francis.

“I don’t think this is good news for any Catholic school,” he said. “We become stronger by having more schools out there succeeding.”