Thursday, May 10, 2007

Financial struggle too great for Catholic school

by Clarke Davis

The small Catholic grade school in Nortonville will close at the end of this term.

Efforts to attract sufficient enrollment to St. Joseph’s and the financial means to continue were unsuccessful.

Parents were informed at a meeting last Thursday and through a letter mailed at the end of the week that the school would be discontinued.

There are 30 pupils in grades kindergarten through sixth-grade plus another 20 in preschool.

Principal Dawna Edmonds, now in her second year at the school, said there is an element of sadness but “we will all walk away from here with our faith.”

The school’s advisory committee was told in January that the school was in financial jeopardy and parents began the task then of trying to find a solution.

“I wasn’t really surprised,” Marietta Heinen, a committee member from Valley Falls, said. “The fund-raising ideas and added tuition were insufficient.”

Marietta and her husband, Dan, sent their three youngest children to the school.

“It was a wonderful school, small and personal,” she said. “It was like having a private tutor.”

Mass was held twice a week and incorporating one’s faith with the daily studies was important to the Heinens.

“It was just a great fit for us,” she said.

Heinen said the finance committee had to be realistic. The number of children in area communities is declining and even with the support of three Catholic churches, the budget that amounted to about $175,000 could not be met.

The school employed a principal and three teachers, who were not paid wages comparable to the public schools.

The school originally opened in 1915.