Since 2000, more than 1,260 Catholic schools have closed nationwide due mostly to declining enrollment, according to The New York Times.
“It’s something that the Council of Bishops in the U.S. is concerned with,” said Robin Couvillon, principal of Holy Trinity Catholic High School in Temple.
Locally, it’s a different story.
“Temple Catholic education is booming,” Couvillon said. “Holy Trinity’s enrollment has risen by 10 percent every year since its existence. We expect the same for the future. This year we have 103 students; our hope for next year is 110 students. We’ll run out of space before we run out of students.”
Couvillon’s not kidding about that.
In its 11th year, Holy Trinity, Temple’s only Catholic high school, is housed in an old elementary school built in 1928, along with four portable buildings in the parking lot.
“We’re still gonna be in the same building next year,” Couvillon said. “But I’d love to be out of here.”
This space issue, along with the school’s plans for the future in many other areas, will be addressed at a business meeting Monday at 5:30 p.m. At 6 p.m., the meeting will be opened to the public.
“Anyone interested in the community is welcome to attend,” Couvillon said. “It’s not just for families of students. We want to involve anyone concerned with the future of Holy Trinity.”
The meeting will serve as a formal presentation of what teachers have been preparing for the past six months. It will be facilitated by the Institute of School and Parish Development, a national development consulting firm for Catholic schools, parishes and dioceses.
Couvillon, who came to the school two years ago as a Hurricane Katrina evacuee, previously worked in New Orleans Catholic education for 15 years. He describes Holy Trinity’s demographic as diverse.
“We have average kids,” Couvillon said. “Thirty percent of our students are non-Catholic; 70 percent are Catholic. A good portion comes from military families. We have a diverse mix of ethnic groups, socioeconomic groups. Last year, we actually had an increase of public school students applying for admission in their freshman, sophomore and junior years. We had parents pulling kids out of public school to put them into this private Catholic school.”
But not all of Holy Trinity’s population is fed through the public school system. It also gets a large portion of its student population from Temple’s other Catholic school, St. Mary’s.
St. Mary’s School in Temple, which has pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, serves as a feeder school to Holy Trinity.
“We hope that all of our eighth-graders would go to Holy Trinity,” said Dr. Ardelle Hamilton, St. Mary’s principal.
According to Dr. Hamilton, St. Mary’s has defied the national enrollment problem as well.
“As far as enrollment goes, we have remained steady or we have increased every year,” she said. “We expect our enrollment to increase this year. But registration isn’t complete, so we don’t yet know exactly what it will be. We expect it to be the same or higher than this year.”
St. Mary’s School was established in 1897 and has 290 students.
“We’re a very old school with a very strong curriculum,” Dr. Hamilton said. “We offer many things to the students, both in terms of curriculum and extra-curricular activities. We don’t have sports for the elementary, but we definitely do for the junior high.”
Dr. Hamilton estimates that any national enrollment problems are largely related to the current state of economy.
“I think because our parents pay tuition and don’t get a tax break that enrollment numbers are suffering,” she said. “They sacrifice to send their children to Catholic schools. And, for some, it has become too much of a financial burden. Like many schools, we are limited as to how many scholarships we have available. But the tuition is a big factor for some people, because of the economy. It’s the economy.”
Couvillon agreed that the economy is probably taking a toll, but he also listed the tuition as one of Holy Trinity’s selling points - it’s relatively lower tuition, that is.
“The cost of tuition at Holy Trinity is about $7,200 a year,” Couvillon said. “The norm for tuition is usually about $10,000 a year for private and parochial schools. Back in New Orleans, my oldest son went to an all-boys Catholic high school. We paid $8,500 for his freshman year. Other schools are more like $11,000 a year. That’s more than $40,000 for a four-year high school education. That’s much more expensive than Holy Trinity. Here, you’re getting a lot more bang for your buck.”
Some of those “bangs” include advanced placement and dual-credit classes, small class-sizes and instruction at the Bioscience institute.
“Even when we expand to the new building, we’ll never exceed 400 students because we want to keep our class sizes small,” Couvillon said.
“Small class sizes allow us to individualize students schedules. We can send them two or four days a week to the Bioscience Institute to take middle college credit classes in science and math, and then we can pay enough attention to have them back here for the rest of the week,” he said.
“Public school kids who take college classes often spend the rest of their week at home or away from school. With our ability to give the students’ schedules individual attention, we can make sure they’re back here the rest of the time to be the school leaders that they need to be,” he said. “That way, even in your senior year while you’re gaining college credit, you’re still serving as a leader of the school and a mentor to the underclassmen. You’re still part of Holy Trinity.”
Couvillon wraps up Holy Trinity’s appeal in a three-fold package.
“We’re not losing enrollment the way some other schools might be,” he said. “And people want to come to our school for three reasons: the academics, the small class sizes and the tuition. When they come here they make a good choice. All of our seniors gain admission into their first choice of college. Most of our students go to upper-tier schools like M.I.T. or Notre Dame. And certainly many attend college more locally - U.T., Texas Tech, Rice. But they all get in.”
