Chicago’s St. Joseph HS, of ‘Hoop Dreams’ fame, announces closure
St. Joseph High School in west suburban Westchester will close at the end of the current school year after more than six decades of educating the Catholic faithful, the latest Chicago-area school to shut its doors amid a period of declining religiosity.
Founded in 1960, St. Joseph High School had an enrollment of 185 students for 2020-21 school year, according to its website.
In a letter Tuesday, the school’s principal, David Hotek, announced the impending closure, citing the economic impact of COVID-19 on family finances and “the serious fiscal burdens St. Joseph High School has experienced during the past several years, as well as our steadily declining school enrollment.”
“The Board of Directors has reluctantly made the recommendation to the Christian Brothers to cease operation of St. Joseph High School at the conclusion of the current academic year. … the recommendation of our Board was accepted,” Hotek wrote. He said more than 11,000 men and women had been educated at the school, “instilling in them a spirit of faith and zeal and a desire to be of service to others.”
On Tuesday, St. Joseph changed its banner image on Facebook to read, “St. John Baptist de LaSalle, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. Live Jesus in our hearts, forever.”
“Praying for all impacted by this closing. May St. Joseph help all, positively, past this truly sad day,” wrote one person on Facebook.
“This breaks my heart,” wrote another. Mark Sassetti, who graduated from St. Joseph in 1984, said he thinks the school’s closing is going to leave a void for students in neighboring communities like Bellwood, Maywood, Berkeley and the near West Side of Chicago.
“It’s just tough,” Sassetti said. “I just feel bad for the kids in those communities that aren’t going to be given a choice.”
Sassetti said when he was attending the Westchester school in the mid-1980s, enrollment was around 700 in the then-all boys school.
“They came from everywhere,” Sassetti said, “from the near South and West Side of the city to Westchester to the western suburbs and all different communities. It really was a wide demographic in the day.”