St. Dominic Parents Protest As Officials Explain School's Closure

BOLINGBROOK, IL — A day after the superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Joliet told parents of students at St. Dominic that he understood their shock, anger, and disappointment, parents held a protest outside of the diocese office Friday as a sign of unity.

Friday’s protest in Crest Hill came a week after parents learned that St. Dominic, which has been open since 1966, will close at the end of the school year. In a letter to parents last week, diocese officials said the decision to close the school had been reached by both the diocese and school officials, which determined they had no other choice.

Since the announcement, however, parents have vowed to fight the decision and have called the choice to shutter the school a “knee-jerk” reaction. They have chastised officials from the Diocese for ignoring them and their pleas to keep the school open. In an open letter to administrators, one St. Dominic teacher called diocese leaders "cowards" and claimed they had turned their backs on the school community.

On Friday, an estimated 120 people, including students, attended the protest despite the dreary conditions. Iris Alvarado, a parent of two St. Dominic students, told Patch on Friday that she felt the group made a statement although she said diocese officials refused to come to meet students when they hand-delivered letters and petitions that had been signed by frustrated parents.

Alvarado said that parents feel that they are being lied to by the diocese, whom she characterized as being "Christians who are Christians on a Sunday for one hour."

"It has been very frustrating," Alvarado told Patch on Friday. "You have a bunch of so-called leaders and they made a decision (to close the school). If you make a decision, you need to have the guts to face the consequences and the consequences in this situation were mad parents."

She added: "The process has been wrong from the very beginning" and has shattered the school community.

In a letter to parents on Thursday, however, Superintendent Michael J. Boyle called the decision to close the school a “step that no one wants to take” and once that “upends a caring and supportive family of devoted teachers, staff, students, and parents.”

However, he explained that the viability of Catholic schools relies on several factors. Chief among them is enrollment, which has been declining at St. Dominic for the past five years, school officials said last week.

In Thursday’s letter, Boyle said that the last time the school saw a surplus was in the 2016-17 school year when the enrollment at St. Dominic was 253 students. Boyle wrote that the surplus that year was $7,800.

He wrote that last fall, diocese officials anticipated the school remaining open for the 2022-23 school year in anticipation the enrollment would go up from its current level. However, after setting a goal of anywhere from 169-178 students, the number of students for next fall stood at 140, Boyle wrote.

He said that school officials submitted a budget for the next school year which showed a $185,000 deficit. Boyle said that after Easter, the process of deciding to close the school was made last week with the announcement being made on April 29.

“We at the diocese acknowledge this process was abrupt, yet we realized that faculty and parents needed to know of the school closing once the decision was made in order to arrange for future employment and student transfer needs,” Boyle wrote in the letter.

Boyle said that in addition to tuition, St. Dominic receives an annual subsidy of $215,000 from supporting parishes at St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi in Bolingbrook. He said that St. Dominic has maintained the subsidy despite seeing its church collection diminish and face other changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boyle wrote that as the church maintains its support of the school, it adds to its own financial challenges.

Boyle said that school and diocese officials plan to meet with parents at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the St. Dominic gym when diocese finance officials, school leadership, and other officials will answer parent questions.

Alvarado said she does not believe that diocese officials will show up on Tuesday and if they do, they will do so just to "massage the situation." While she says she and others are trying to maintain ray hope that some sort of compromise can be reached, she is quickly losing faith.

However, diocese officials said that they are committed to working together with parents. In the letter last week they said that they will help St. Dominic teachers to find new jobs and will help students find a new Catholic school home after the school closes.

“Every ending marks a beginning,” Boyle wrote to close the letter. “In spite of our sadness and disappointment, we must all work together to end the school year peacefully for our students.”