CLEARING — The same parents and school leaders who were blindsided by the Archdiocese of Chicago's abrupt plans to close St. Rene Goupil have vowed to save the Southwest Side school.
"Without this school, the community would be different and we don't want that to happen," Anita Cummings, a former St. Rene teacher and board member, said at a special parish meeting held Thursday night at the school, 6340 S. New England Ave.
St. Rene is one of a handful of Catholic schools scheduled to be closed for good in June, ending what would be a 55-year run in the tightly-knit neighborhood. Nearby St. Turibius, 4120 W. 57th in West Elsdon, is also slated to close.
About 125 people packed into the St. Rene cafeteria for Thursday's meeting, intent on shaping the school's future.
For now, those plans include touting the school's attributes — dedicated teachers and small class sizes among them — and marketing it to surrounding neighborhoods to boost enrollment, which currently hovers around 170 students.
A new website "Save St. Rene School" has been set up, along with a private Facebook page for school families.
Parents, meanwhile, are scrambling to make plans for the closing, just in case the archdiocese makes good on its promise.
Gloria Castillo, of Clearing, recently pulled her kids from another Catholic school so they could enroll at St. Rene. She's had one student graduate from there and has two more enrolled — a kindergartner and a sixth-grader.
"For us to find out now, I never would've brought my kids here," she said.
The archdiocese has cited the high operating costs associated with running its schools as the primary reason for closing some of them, having spent $165 million from local parish contributions and archdiocesan assets over the past five years to subsidize its school network.
But "the archdiocese simply cannot sustain our current funding levels," Cardinal Francis George said in a column in the archdiocesan newspaper, adding that the archdiocese faces continued operating deficits.
The cardinal made a point of saying that the budget deficits are not related to "misconduct settlements."
The school, Cummings said, doesn't owe the archdiocese any money, so fundraising plans for the school are in the works but aren't the priority.
"We don't want to start asking people for money until we know what we'd do with it," Cummings said.
Shortly after the archdiocese handed down the news late last month, St. Rene parent and students gathered for a hastily organized candlelight vigil outside the school, where key Southwest Side civic leaders including U.S. Rep Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) and Ald. Michael Zalewski (23rd) rallied to fight to keep the school alive, the Southwest Chicago Post reported.
"There is no reason at all St. Rene's should be closed. None," Zalewski said.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
