When the Archdiocese of San Antonio announced the closure of St. Paul Catholic School last month, alumni and parents of the PreK-8 school went into action, calling for community support and pledging money to save the 72-year-old institution.
“The closure of St. Paul Catholic School is a devastating loss for our community,” Sonya Cardenas, an alumnus of the school, wrote on Facebook. “Seventy years of history is worth fighting for!”
But the archdiocese will follow through on plans to close St. Paul’s after this school year wraps up, citing declining enrollment and “immediate” financial need at the school, which currently serves around 100 students.
St. Paul was in financial trouble for years, receiving $250,000 from the parish annually and more than $1 million for deferred maintenance needs, the archdiocese said.
The archdiocese closed St. Gerard Catholic High School in 2022.
Following a similar trend on the public school side, San Antonio ISD closed 15 schools last year and North East ISD plans to close three schools in the wake of massive budget deficits and a shrinking student population.
Despite the recent closures, student enrollment in Catholic schools has actually gone up since 2021 by about 6% in San Antonio and 3% across the nation, even as the number of U.S. adults still following the faith has decreased, said Jason King, the Beirne Chair and Director of the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary’s University.
Last year, 20% of U.S. adults identified as Catholic, a figure which has remained steady for a few years but is a slight decrease from 2007, when 24% of U.S. adults identified as Catholic, according to the Pew Research Center.
At the same time, private Catholic schools in San Antonio like Central Catholic High School and St. Anthony High School enjoy high demand and steady enrollment numbers.
So why is St. Paul having to close?
Population shifts affect enrollment
King said it’s a mixture of factors, including aging inner city populations, growth outside the 410 loop and in the I-35 corridor from San Antonio to Austin, and what he calls “reputation building.”
Between April 2020 and July 2024, the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area grew by nearly 205,000 people, and the population now sits at nearly 2.8 million, an increase from 2.6 million just four years ago, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Though public and private school officials usually point to COVID-19 pandemic as the catalyst for falling enrollment, King said schools inside and near the 410 loop started to feel the drop even before 2020.
St. Paul is inside of the 410 loop not far from the Jefferson neighborhood, and St. Gerard, which closed in 2022, was on the East Side near St. Philip’s College.
A growth in enrollment is seen from only a few schools, particularly outside the Loop 1604, where populations are booming, and by a handful of “outlier” Catholic schools deep inside the city.
Central Catholic High School, for example, near downtown San Antonio, has a steadily growing enrollment in the 500s, serving boys from 72 different ZIP codes.
St. Anthony High School enrolls around 230 students at its co-ed campus located near Trinity University.
King said K-12 Catholic schools may be following a similar pattern seen in Catholic higher education institutions, where smaller schools are closing due to low enrollment while bigger schools are growing.
Reputation, academics are everything
Reputation, academic rigor and a focus on faith may also be contributing to a handful of Catholic schools’ steady enrollment, especially in the cases of schools like Central Catholic and St. Anthony, King added.
“Central just has such a reputation that it’s able to kind of survive and endure,” King said.
Parents of Central Catholic students tend to agree.
Mike Zacho, an executive at Valero, says his son graduated from the school in 2021 and is now enrolled in Texas A&M University’s mechanical engineering program.
While Zacho’s family is not Catholic, he said it was the strength of the alumni, along with the school’s academics and faith-based education that attracted him to the all-boys, elite private school.
Despite living on the Northside and never having enrolled in Catholic schools before, Zacho chose Central for his son and made the drive every morning to get him to school.
Later, Zacho would enroll his daughter at Incarnate Word High School, an all-girl private Catholic school similar to Central.
“You go in picking a school solely for the education, or whatever those factors are that you’re looking for,” Zacho said. “In the end, you kind of come away with it with more than what you went there for.”
Similarly, Gilbert Lozano, who retired from the military and is currently the school’s parent club president, enrolled two of his sons at Central Catholic because of the school’s enduring culture of “brotherhood” and the academic and extracurricular programming.
Lozano’s family is Catholic and his sons Gavin and Garrick, now 19 and 17, had attended St. Luke Catholic School, a private preK-8 school on the Northwest side.
Gavin Lozano graduated from Central Catholic last year and is now at a military school in Georgia.
Garrick is a part of Central’s JROTC program, which received a perfect score of 100 during a JROTC accreditation assessment in January, a first in the state of Texas.
A product of public schools on the South Side, Lozano said he chose private Catholic schools for his sons because he wanted a smaller tight-knit school community, and he doesn’t mind the 22-minute drive from his home in Westover Hills to Central Catholic every day.
“I’m a big advocate for Central Catholic because of what it’s provided — how it’s provided for my boys, the faith that it has, and also how they welcomed me and my wife and all parents.”
Less than two miles away from Central Catholic, St. Anthony will be expanding its offerings with a Spanish dual track program starting next school year.
The program will allow incoming freshman at the co-ed private school to immerse themselves in the Spanish language, taking at least two core classes, like biology or algebra, completely in Spanish.
Patricia Ramirez, the principal at St. Anthony, said they will be the only private Catholic high school in the country to do so, using dual language models from San Antonio ISD and giving the school an edge against local competitors.
“This is offering a small faith based environment and the rigor that comes with a Catholic high school, plus the pathways offered to the university level with that dual language option,” Ramirez said. “We need to be able to keep up with the needs of the community.”
Why some Catholic schools struggle
King, a religious scholar, said it’s also easier for Catholic schools offering higher grade levels, such as Central Catholic and St. Anthony high schools, to maintain enrollment compared to schools offering lower grade levels, such as St. Paul, a K-8 school.
High schools, King said, tend to have stronger alumni bases and a sharpened focus on bonding.
School pride for Central Catholic alumni runs so strongly that Rep. Philip Cortez (D-San Antonio), an alumnus of the school, filed a bill during the current state legislative session seeking custom license plates for the high school. The bill passed the House on Wednesday and is pending consideration from the Senate.
“Elementary school is a different kind of experience. It’s more nourishing, but it’s less kind of bonding and connecting,” King said.
Parents may also opt to enroll students in private Catholic schools because public schools are more caught up in “political discourse.”
Public school districts often play host to polarized school boards and can be at odds with state and federally elected officials, especially when it comes to funding and classroom content.
“Somehow Catholic schools seem a little bit more stable and a little bit more divorced from that. So that seems appealing, not for a lot, but for some,” King said.
On the other hand, enrolling in a Catholic school often means higher costs for families including transportation and a smaller selection of school programs to choose from.
There are three types of Catholic schools: parish schools connected directly with local Catholic parishes, diocesan schools reporting directly to the archdiocese, and independent private schools which may or may not be connected to a religious order.
Central Catholic for example was established by the Marianists, an international Roman Catholic congregation of brothers and priests dedicated to religious figure Mary. Providence Catholic School, an all-girls institution, was established by the Sisters of Divine Providence.
Diocesan and parish schools also tend to serve grades below the high school level.
Because they receive financial support from local parishes, diocesan schools are usually more affordable than independent Catholic schools.
What’s important to remember, King said, is that Catholic school enrollment is not singularly impacted by how many practicing Catholics there are or aren’t.
“People are valuing Catholic schools, not so much because they’re Catholic, but because of community or academic rigor, or the moral education.”
