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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Many stunned as school shuts down

By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer

Kerstin Ka'aha'aina, a kindergarten teacher at Our Lady of Sorrows school in Wahiawa, sheds a tear as she packs books. The school closed Friday after 41 years.

Photos by Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser


Kerstin Ka'aha'aina, who was in her first year teaching kindergarten at Our Lady of Sorrows, said there was no closure or goodbye involved when the Catholic school closed with little warning.
WAHIAWA — The classroom was filled with boxes of books and stuffed animals, bags of building blocks and crayons. The chalkboards were wiped clean.

But Kerstin Ka'aha'aina wasn't cleaning her classroom for summer vacation. She was packing it up for good.

With little warning, Our Lady of Sorrows in Wahiawa announced Friday it was closing after 41 years.

The notice came as a shock to parents who thought the school was on the rebound. Students, whose last day was Thursday, weren't told about the school's uncertain future.

"There was no closure, no goodbye," said Ka'aha'aina, a first-year kindergarten teacher. "It was like, 'Have a good summer. See you next year.' But we won't."

It is the first Roman Catholic school to close on O'ahu in more than 20 years, diocesan officials said. The reason — declining enrollment — follows a national trend among small parish schools.

With the closure, 10 teachers lost their jobs, and dozens of parents have to find another school for their children for next year.

According to a letter to parents from the Rev. Clarence Fisher, keeping the K-8 school open for the upcoming school year would create a minimum $80,000 deficit.

To remain open, the school needed at least 78 registered students. By June 2, it had only 67.

"I am sure that this advisory comes as a shock to some," Fisher wrote in the letter dated June 5, "but we cannot continue to spiral downward as the deficit mounts, becoming an increasing burden to the parish and the diocese."

About $36,000 of the school's savings have been spent and the administration was tapping into another $36,000 of the parish's savings to meet school expenses, the letter explained. The parish had already incurred a debt with the diocese of about $30,000 to cover the school's financial obligations for July.

The last Catholic school to close in Hawai'i was St. Francis School on Kaua'i in July 2001 after only four years in business. On O'ahu, Star of the Sea in Wai'alae-Kahala shut down its high school in the 1980s, but it continues to run an elementary program.

Last year, Catholic schools lost more than 65,000 students nationwide. About 140 schools closed, many of them attached to parishes in large urban areas with dwindling numbers of churchgoers and families with school-age children.

Our Lady of Sorrows watched its enrollment drop for years. Two years ago the school had about 130 students, dropping to 89 this past year.

"Our schools have been going through difficult times," said Patrick Downes, spokesman for the Honolulu diocese. "Numbers are down all the way around."

Costs to operate these small schools have gone up, forcing an increase in tuition, which has negatively affected enrollment, he said.

Tuition at Our Lady of Sorrows was about $3,500 a year, considered reasonable for a Catholic education, parents said.

The larger, established Catholic schools remain strong, Downes said. Saint Louis will reopen an elementary school it closed in 1949, for example, and Damien Memorial School plans to open a middle school in fall 2004.

Our Lady of Sorrows brought in principal Margaret Yamamoto this year after the former principal took a teaching job at another Catholic school.

Parents had hoped Yamamoto, who had taught at Maryknoll School for 18 years, would turn the school around.

"(But) they were in trouble already," Downes said.

Yamamoto could not be reached for comment.

Melissa Graffigna doesn't know where she will send her two children to school next year. They had attended Our Lady of Sorrows since kindergarten.

"I'm completely devastated," said the Launani Valley resident, who organized the school's first parent-teacher group at the school this year. "My children are very upset about it. I feel it was an unnecessary event."

She felt the direction Yamamoto was taking the school, in particular by giving more support to and involvement with parents, would have boosted enrollment if the parish had given the school a chance.

More than a dozen parents withheld registering their children until the school announced which teachers would return. Had those numbers been counted, the school would have exceeded the 78 students required to keep the school open, Graffigna said.

"We felt this was a rebuilding year and we struggled," she said. "The parents felt so together. The heartbeat of the school was getting stronger and stronger."

Lisa Reaume was looking forward to her sixth-grade year, hanging out with the girls she had become such good friends with in the three years she attended Our Lady of Sorrows.

"I liked the school a lot," said the 11-year-old. "We were smaller, so we got to do a lot of things most schools didn't."

Her mother, Theresa, already enrolled her three children in St. Michael's School in Waialua, which has opened its doors to the Our Lady of Sorrows students. Like Graffigna, she was disappointed with the school's decision to close.

"We were all very excited about the new principal, new blood, it was revitalizing," Reaume said. "We really thought this was a new beginning."

Reach Catherine E. Toth at ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8103.


Correction: Damien Memorial plans to open its middle school in fall 2004. A previous version of this story gave an incorrect year.