LITTLE ROCK — After an unexpected vote, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral church officials announced Wednesday that they will close the Cathedral School in Little Rock on Friday after more than 54 years.
“We’re devastated and very surprised by their decision,” Fred Niell, headmaster of the school on South Spring Street, said Wednesday morning.
Niell said the vote Tuesday night by the church’s board of elected officials to close the school came “completely out of the blue,” and that “no reason was given.”
The decision contradicted board sentiments from about a month earlier, Niell and School Board member Jennifer Pyron said, adding that the vestry had praised and offered support for the faith-based school.
Kay Stebbins, who is senior warden of the vestry, did not return a message Wednesday seeking comment.
However, the vestry released a statement saying in part, “Throughout its history, and particularly for the last several years, many people worked tirelessly and made considerable financial gifts to keep the school open.
“Unfortunately, small class sizes, modest tuition, and reduced enrollment caused the school to be financially unsustainable for the foreseeable future.”
The school had 79 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade this year.
The statement says the early-childhood-education program for infants and toddlers will continue.
Morgan Jackson, the church’s minister of hospitality, said Stebbins would not answer a reporter’s questions about the decision to close the school.
Pyron, also an alumna of the school and a parent of two students there, said the Cathedral School lost more than half of its families when Episcopal Collegiate opened a new $19 million elementary school in 2009.
“The school has been in a position of instability for two years,” Pyron said, “but we have pledges from donors ... and an extreme outpouring of support from parents who have worked tirelessly to raise money to continue the legacy of the school.”
She and Niell said enrollment had begun to rebound, with the number of students increasing over the previous two years. The school also was planning an expansion that would have created asixth grade for the 2011-12 school year.
Tuition for the private school ranges between $4,800 and $7,500, not including fees and discounts.
Ideally, Pyron said, the school would be 70 percent funded by tuition and 30 percent funded by private donations. The church does not fund the school, she said.
But the Cathedral School had fallen short of that formula, Pyron said. Asked what percentage of costs tuition covered, Pyron said she was unsure but that the school’s treasurer would call the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with that information. No such call was received.
Pyron and Niell said the school had recently given the vestry a long-range financial plan that would have put the school back on solid footing.
“Now we’ll never know if we could have hit those benchmarks and goals we set for ourselves,” Pyron said. “All of us thought we could.”
Niell said he is hastily arranging a meeting with parents to help them make the transition to another school, though he remained hopeful that he could convince the vestry that it made a “mistake.”
Alumni and supporters began posting messages on the school’s Facebook page as news of the closure was released.
“I am saddened by this and see a great hole being left for the kids. It is a very poor and hasty decision which has been made here,” one man wrote.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/26/2011