Plummeting enrollment brings about plan to shut school

After 45 years in operation, Lutheran High School of Hawaii will close its doors for good at the end of this academic year because enrollment has fallen to just 38 students and shows no signs of increasing.

“This was a very difficult decision for the board to make, but one that was fiscally prudent,” said Donna Carney, director of the Board of the Lutheran High School Association of Hawaii, which oversees the school.

“I want to thank the dedicated staff and teachers, some of whom have been with us since the very beginning. Words can never adequately express our appreciation for their loyalty, dedication, sacrifice and Christian love for our students, their ohana, and most especially our school.”

There are 11 students in this year’s graduating class. Faculty and staff are helping the other students in grades six through 11 find new spots for the next academic year. Private schools in the area have offered to extend their application deadlines to accommodate them.

Lutheran High School’s enrollment, once as high as 200 students, had dropped to 92 in the 2011-12 academic year and 50 in the last school year, according to reports maintained by the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools. It projected next year’s enrollment to be about the same as this year’s.

“In the past five years, enrollment has steadily declined,” the Rev. William Carney, pastor of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, said Thursday. “You cannot properly run a school with those kinds of numbers.”

The school, on the grounds of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church on University Avenue, is one of 120 high schools operated by the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod. It has a faculty and staff of 13, headed by Principal Daryl Utsumi, and charged $12,470 annually in tuition. Students and staff were told last week of the decision to close.

“A number of smaller private schools are closing due to decreased enrollment, and some of the largest schools that at one time had waiting lists, now they are using those waiting lists for enrollment,” Rev. Carney said. “Whether it’s a combination of family finances, the economy, kids are going to public schools, you really don’t know the answer.”

Lutheran High had tried to enroll international students, and its staff had taken pay cuts and some even switched their health coverage to their spouses’ plans to reduce the school’s expenses, he said. But the finances remained bleak.

“It would not be good stewardship to open a school and maybe get to, say, March or April and say, ‘There is no more money, we can’t pay our teachers,’” he said. “We can’t do that to the teachers, especially these teachers — they’ve given so much.”

The Lutheran Church opened a lower school with kindergarten through eighth grade in 1965. It added ninth grade in the 1970-71 academic year, and its first seniors graduated in 1975.

That elementary school, Our Redeemer Lutheran School, closed three years ago, and Voyager Public Charter School took over its campus.