North Side’s Saint Scholastica Academy to close in June
By ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter rrossi@suntimes.com March 14, 2012 4:24PM
The Benedictine Sisters of Chicago have decided to close St. Scholastica Academy, 7430 N. Ridge, at the end of the current school year. | TOM CRUZE~Sun-Times
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Updated: April 16, 2012 8:20AM
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was among the parents reeling Wednesday from news that St. Scholastica Academy — where his eldest daughter, Amy, attends classes and his wife, Patti, once graduated — will close in June.
Over the years, St. Scholastica’s enrollment has dwindled from a peak of 1,000 in the 1970s and early 1980s to 147 students today, said Sister Patricia Crowley, prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago — the order that’s run the school for 146 years, since before the Great Chicago Fire. Tuition is $9,500 a year, but about half the students are on some sort of scholarship, she said. At various points, Crowley said, St. Scholastica had considered going coed but the school stayed committed to single-sex education. It hired consultants to try to figure out why it was not attracting more students but the experts “couldn’t determine, really, why the students weren’t coming here,” Crowley said. Finally, on Sunday, the 44 members of the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago — with a median age of 77 — took a grim vote on the school’s fate. Learning the results of that vote Wednesday in the school auditorium, stunned, uniformed students cried and hugged each other. “This was a shock to them,’’ Crowley said.
