St. Anthony School in Wailuku, Maui, holding a socially distanced outdoor prayer service. (Courtesy photo)
The pandemic brings record enrollment to some Hawaii Catholic schools
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
The trend for Hawaii Catholic schools for many years has been declining enrollment. But along with all the uncertainty brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, some local parochial schools have found an unexpected boost to their student numbers.
Parents tired of online learning and of how public schools have handled this school year have turned to Catholic schools, which have been back to socially distanced, in-person learning — with the option for online learning — since the beginning of the school year. Hawaii Catholic schools are also often more affordable than other Hawaii private schools.
“I am aware of a few schools who have extraordinarily high intent to returns for next year which is unusual ESPECIALLY on the neighbor islands,” Hawaii Catholic Schools Office superintendent Llewellyn Young wrote in an email to the Hawaii Catholic Herald.
St. Theresa School in Kekaha learners Alana and Makenzie enjoying recess. (Courtesy photo)
One of those schools is St. Theresa School in Kekaha. Principal Wendy Castillo said she’s trying to find space to create a second kindergarten class for the upcoming school year.
Classes that have not reached capacity in several years are now full. Castillo said enrollment for the pre-K-8 school was at 130 students before the pandemic. This school year, it was at 140, and Castillo stopped accepting new students after the first quarter because classrooms had settled in to their new safety protocols and setups.
Next year’s enrollment is currently at 172 students, and a few grades already have waitlists since classroom sizes were capped at 15 students due to the need for social distancing and safety protocols.
“No one can remember the last time” enrollment has been this good, Castillo said with a laugh.
The pandemic has brought added expenses to the St. Theresa school budget, including hiring a professional cleaning company to disinfect the entire school each day. To offset part of those costs, St. Theresa has held fundraisers and received donations.
“We still have many areas of need, and the growing enrollment increases our cost,” Castillo added.
Castillo has been impressed with how cooperative parents have been with adopting the school’s extensive pandemic plan including keeping kids home when they have a runny nose or aren’t feeling well.
“They’re really doing their part to protect each class,” she said.
Drawing them in for the long haul
At St. Anthony School in Wailuku, Maui, which formed four years ago from the consolidation of the junior-senior high school and the elementary school, student numbers have also been up since the pandemic.
“I think it’s caused everyone to pause, current families appreciating what our Catholic school offers and other families saying, you know, who’s been consistent, who is putting kids first besides everything else?” said head of school Tim Cullen. “And I would say St. Anthony’s School and our other Catholic schools stand out in that way.”
After two successful 2020 summer programs and looking at the state of schooling during the pandemic, Cullen thought enrollment would be up this year at the Marianist-sponsored school.
“We predicted that by being open and by being hands-on and using our spaces and finding creative ways that would be attractive to our current families and new families. And I would say we’re probably an example of many other Catholic schools across Hawaii and across the country that have found a way to work it out,” he said.
Cullen budgeted for 220 students at St. Anthony, Wailuku, this school year but raised that amount to cover 250 students right before the academic year started. He ended up being able to offer contracts to more grade school teachers than expected. More students were added as the school year went on, and enrollment is now 290 students. Next year, Cullen expects to have about 300 students.
“I always say it doesn’t matter what brings someone to our Catholic school,” he said. “Once they come, they should be immersed in our culture/climate and realize that, for whatever the initial reason was, this actually is the place their child should be.”
St. Joseph School in Waipahu has offered both in-person, picture here, and online learning options this school year. (Courtesy photo)
Importance of in-person learning
One of the first questions prospective families ask when touring St. Joseph School in Waipahu is whether the school is doing in-person or online learning. The school has been face-to-face since the start of the school year with an option to be online, although only 20 students are currently choosing the latter.
“In this unknown world that we’re in right now, [parents] just want some kind of, ‘OK, we can plan, it’s not an unknown,’” said Beverly Sandobal, the school principal.
In recent years at St. Joseph School in Waipahu, the worry has been getting enough students to fill grade levels, she said. But the school target enrollment is already halfway met and it is only April.
For 2019-2020, there were 286 students in the pre-K-8 school. This year, 294 students are enrolled. Eighty-five percent of this year’s students are coming back next year, with 285 students already confirmed for next school year. Office manager and director of admissions Denise Cashman expects a second wave of applications.
Part of the enrollment uptick for this school year came from the 40-50 families who moved to St. Joseph after Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Ewa Beach closed in June 2020. St. Joseph offered those families the same tuition rate as what they paid at OLPH. Cashman said almost all those families are returning for the upcoming school year.
But what’s surprised Cashman is how much earlier in the school year she has received new student applications plus returning students’ “intent to return” forms with deposits. In previous years she doesn’t see those kinds of numbers until closer to the summer.
“I definitely have seen a change and a little bit of a shift,” she said. “A lot of our students are coming from the public schools that I see on the applications.”
St. Joseph School has received the support of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, with pastor Father Ed Barut encouraging his parishioners to see St. Joseph as their new parish school now that its own school has closed. Since St. Joseph is the only Catholic school in the Leeward Oahu vicariate, pastors in the vicariate helped distribute information about St. Joseph at their churches during Catholic Schools Week.
Making sure families feel welcome, starting with the admissions process, is important for keeping enrollment up, Cashman said.
“We are mission-driven, we’re very faith-based,” she said. However, we still are a business so customer service has to be a priority.”
Over in the Waialae-Kahala area on Oahu, Mary, Star of the Sea School, enrollment started at 178 students this academic year and was at 211 as of April 8. Forty new public-school students were among those numbers as well as a few international students.
Principal Margaret Rufo said that typically the school gets 50-60 applications a year and they got 114 for the 2020-2021 school year.
The projected enrollment for next year is 234 students, which would be an 88 percent retention rate. Rufo noted that among the 18 current students not planning to return are five who will go back to public school and another five moving to bigger private schools with high schools. The rest are moving to the mainland.
St. Joseph School in Waipahu has offered both in-person and online, pictured here, learning options this school year. (Courtesy photo)
It hasn’t been all good news for Hawaii Catholic schools. St. John the Baptist School in Kalihi-uka and Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Ewa Beach closed at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, and St. Ann School in Kaneohe, the oldest Catholic school in the state, will close at the end of this year.
Superintendent Young said that St. Joseph School in Hilo, which almost closed last year, seems to be back on track and “doing very well financially thanks to the accounting help from our office,” but that enrollment numbers for next year haven’t come in yet.
The Hawaii Catholic Schools Office continues to offer its schools guidance as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention roll out new guidelines.
“In light of new guidelines, Hawaii Catholic Schools have asked all schools to maintain their protocols and procedures as there are very few changes in the overall recommendations for schools,” Young said. “In many cases, where society is loosening restrictions, our schools are actually tightening their protocols even further to keep their communities safe.”
