Pastor, archdiocese reiterate need to close St. Alphonsus School in Prospect Heights

The pastor of St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church in Prospect Heights reiterated the financial and enrollment reasons to close its 67-year-old school next week in a message to parishioners over the weekend.

Pastor Greg Wojcik explained there is an estimated $500,000 shortfall to operate the school next year based on the 134 students currently committed to enrolling.

But while a GoFundMe campaign has set that amount of funding as its goal, the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Schools last week said $750,000 is the actual figure that would be needed.

“Nothing prepared us for the sharp and unexpected drop in enrollment, from 175 students at the start of 2024 to just 115 committed for the upcoming school year by January,” Wojcik wrote. “The suddenness of this decline was both heartbreaking and alarming, forcing us to confront a reality we had hoped to avoid.”

By April, just 134 students were committed to next year.

When the school’s closure was announced in mid-May, Natalia Evangelista immediately set up the GoFundMe campaign to save it that exceeded $25,000 very quickly. But more than a week later, it had risen to only $33,683 by Tuesday afternoon with a total of 117 individual donations.

Meanwhile, parents continued to decry a lack of transparency that included the cancellation without explanation of a town hall scheduled for Tuesday evening.

“The hope was that we would get questions answered,” said Rosemary Baroud, whose fourth and youngest child is graduating. “I think people just know that he doesn’t want the school. It’s like a death. It’s been part of my life for 19 years.”

But Wojcik’s message did shed some light on the parties involved in the decision to close the school.

“After much prayer, discussion and discernment, the Parish Finance Council and the School Advisory Board presented this information to Cardinal Cupich, and it was agreed to close the school,” he wrote.

He also thanked the families, teachers and staff of the school for their years of support.

Other archdiocese schools scheduled to close at the end of the academic year are St. Thomas of Villanova in Palatine, St. Catherine Laboure in Glenview, and St. William and St. Hilary in Chicago.