Financial woes lead to decision to close Saint Francis School

Saint Francis School in Manoa will shut down completely after graduation in May, unable to overcome its debt, nearly a century after it was founded.

“This is very sad for all of us, and it has been the most heart-wrenching weeks and months of planning,” said Sister Barbara Jean Donovan, general minister of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities of Syracuse, N.Y., which sponsors the school. “Simply put, there is not enough money to continue.”

The decision was made public late Thursday at a meeting of staff, parents, alumni and others that was livestreamed to the school community. Officials had announced Jan. 7 that the middle and upper school would close due to money woes but had hoped to keep the elementary school going if enough children signed up. That effort failed.

“It became painfully apparent when we had our open house (Saturday) that we just didn’t have the numbers,” Casey Asato, who was appointed as head of school in August, said after the meeting.

Founded in 1924, Saint Francis had long been a girls school but branched out in 2006 to accept boys and built up a strong athletic program. It has 442 students in preschool through 12th grade and 64 staff members. The school was known for offering an affordable Catholic education, with high school tuition at $13,000 annually.

It takes about $18,000 to educate a student at Saint Francis, Donovan said, adding that the Sisters of St. Francis congregation has been subsidizing the school for several years.

Parent Cheryl Ng, who has four children in seventh through 12th grade at the Manoa campus, said her family chose Saint Francis for its strong sports program and the feeling of ohana on campus. Ironically, those factors contributed to the financial straits that ultimately doomed the school.

The school owes more than $2 million to the Sisters of St. Francis, much of it for construction of the gymnasium it completed in 2013, according to Randall Yee, chairman of its board of directors. And its cash flow has been hampered by the school’s family-style generosity — with low tuition, sibling discounts and extensive financial aid.

“All our kids are here — it was a perfect place for the family,” Ng said, whose sons Kameron and Kordel helped power Saint Francis’ basketball team to a strong finish this season. “Sports was part of what brought us here, because they could play together. … This was just a family-oriented place.”

In addition to the debt on the gym, estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million, the school also borrowed from the congregation for operations “when funds were tight,” Yee said.

A former member of the state Board of Education, Yee said he found the school’s finances in far worse shape than he expected when he took over as chairman of the board in December 2017.

“The board did everything that it possibly could to continue,” he said. “The board did not want to give up.”

Surprising demise

In some ways the school’s demise comes as a surprise. Catholic school enrollment has shrunk roughly 3 percent per year in Hawaii over the last decade, in keeping with a national trend, but Saint Francis had bucked the trend by admitting boys in 2006 and growing its student population.

It had 491 students in preschool through 12th grade in the 2017-2018 academic year, up from 425 in 2007-2008, according to data kept by the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools.

Still, 60 percent of students were on financial aid, and the debt on the gym proved daunting.

“There wasn’t, I think, enough analysis of the true cost of educating a child,” Yee said. “Sometimes the charity and the generosity, probably in hindsight, was maybe more generous than what could have been.”

“Everybody paid something but that something varied, and not everybody paid the something they should have paid,” he added.

Many other private schools already have stepped up to welcome students from Saint Francis, offering tuition discounts and other incentives.

Yee estimated that $4 million to $5 million would have had to be raised to keep the whole operation — preschool through 12th grade — going for another year. That’s a staggering sum since its current endowment is just $168,000.

The end of such a long-lived school brings pain to students, parents and alumni.

“There’s a lot of history for 94 years,” said Rita Chun, president of the Saint Francis Alumni Association and a 1965 graduate. “That’s why it’s very difficult. It’s almost like going through a bereavement and grief and a deep wound in your heart.”

Saint Francis sits on 11 valuable acres in the heart of Manoa Valley, property that is owned by the Sisters of St. Francis. The nuns who used to teach there and live on its grounds are due to move in December or early next year to the St. Francis Health Care System’s Kupuna Village in Liliha.

The Manoa land is likely to be put up for sale after that. In recent years the Syracuse-based congregation has been selling its mainland properties to pay for the care of the 345 sisters in its religious community as they age.

“One of the values of Saint Francis that the school tried to promote, support and live was caring for the less fortunate,” Donovan said. “And I think … it wasn’t a good business model for a school. And there weren’t programs set up … that brought in enough money to support those who could not afford the tuition.”