Queen of Heaven school closes after 67 years
Declining enrollment, aging parish population cited as main factors
For the first time in 67 years, the 8 a.m. buzzer announcing the start of the school day, which began with prayer, will no longer be heard at Queen of Heaven Catholic School.
Located in the Northeast Heights, the school is being shuttered, a victim of change in the surrounding parish neighborhoods that saw fewer and fewer children, and a national trend in which fewer parents are sending their kids to religious schools of any kind, said principal Mary Catherine Keating.
“I’m sure that the priest abuse scandal has affected enrollment at schools, as well as membership in the church,” she acknowledged, but in the case of Queen of Heaven, “it’s mostly the cycle of an aging neighborhood.”
The school, she said, “has been an integral part of the local community, of Albuquerque and of the archdiocese for so many years, so it
really is the end of an era.”
Located at 5303 Phoenix NE and on the same property as Queen of Heaven Catholic Church, the school had just 53 students last year. The decision to close the school was made June 27 by school and parish officials, Keating said.
In a letter from the parish pastor to the Queen of Heaven community, the Rev. Fernando Sáenz wrote: “Due to a large lack of enrollment the school cannot be sustained without incurring a major deficit. At this time, the Queen of Heaven Parish community no longer has a sufficient number of children enrolled to sustain the adequate fiscal operation of a parish school.”
Although July often sees an influx of new student enrollment, announcing the closure sooner, rather than later, “allows parents time to find other schools for their students, and gives teachers time to find employment at other Catholic schools as well.”
Nearly all of the school’s remaining 10 teachers have already found other positions, she said.
Queen of Heaven School opened in 1952 as a high school. Two years later, an elementary school was incorporated.
When St. Piux X High School was established in 1955, the high school kids at Queen of Heaven “became the nucleus for that new school,” Keating said.
Queen of Heaven evolved into a pre-K through 8th grade school, which at its peak had more than 400 students, she said.
By the 2005-2006 school year, enrollment had dropped to about 300. The decline continued and enrollment fell to 175 during the 2011-2012 school year, then to 126 for the 2012-2013 year, and 85 for the 2013-2014 school year, when Keating became principal.
The school had been on life support for a number years. Expenses were met with the yearly $4,900 tuition fees, fund raising, and subsidies from the Queen of Heaven parish and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, she said.
Operating costs were further reined in by adopting multi-level classrooms that combined kindergarten and first grade, second and third grades, fourth and fifth grades, and last year sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
“Research in education shows that multi-age classrooms are really good for children, and our children had great test scores,” Keating said. “Decreasing enrollment has not changed that and our kids have thrived. We’re proud of where we brought them and it’s sad to see the school close, but we know financially it just can’t sustain.”
With a few exceptions, Queen of Heaven is not alone among Catholic religious schools with declining enrollment or among parish churches with an aging and declining number of congregants.
“You can see it at Mass,” she said. “It’s an older group that’s there.”
Nationwide, she noted, the trend among parents is to not send their children to religious schools in general — regardless of the religion. However, “it’s not so much a religious issue as it is a financial issue,” Keating said. “Private religious schools are simply more expensive than secular public schools, and in a poor state like New Mexico, that’s absolutely a big deal.
“I heard from parents all the time they’d love to send their kids to Queen of Heaven but they couldn’t afford it, and we probably did more than most schools in providing substantial financial assistance for families.”
The school building, which is the property of the parish, will continue to be used for parish events as well as for religious education programs for students who go to public schools, and for adult education programs, Keating said.
Still, the loss for her is not just professional.
“I love the families, I love the children. We had a marvelous group of teachers who were very cohesive and felt the same way about the kids and one another. It was very much an incredible community. Personally, it’s the people that are the biggest loss for me,” Keating said.
Celine Baca Radigan, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, also felt the school’s closure on a personal level and said she was “heartbroken” but knows the decision was made “with great diligence and prayer.”
As a parent whose children attended Queen of Heaven, someone who taught at the school, then as an administrator in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe Catholic Schools central office, Radigan was “constantly amazed at the steadfast commitment of the staff and community to academic excellence infused with our Catholic teachings and their love and support of their students,” she said.
“Queen of Heaven School is indeed a treasure that has produced numerous outstanding community leaders and has earned its place in Albuquerque’s history books as one of the finest in the nation. It will be sorely missed.”
Geneva Trujillo, a long-time Queen of Heaven parishioner, whose three now-grown children attended the school, said her children “still have their faith and so do their children,” which she directly attributes to Queen of Heaven School.
“The school’s academics were great, and when my kids got into Del Norte High School, they were ahead of the game by a full year,” she said.
Bound by their faith and the superior quality of the education, the Queen of Heaven families were “tightly knit,” and the closing of the school, “is like a death in the family,” Trujillo said.