Maria High School: Another One Bites The Dust

Maria High School announced it would be closing.  The following is the full story as reported by ABC News:

By Ravi Baichwal, ABC/WLS News October 7, 2011

An all-girls Catholic high school on Chicago's Southwest Side is closing.

The century-old Maria High School in the Marquette Park community will be converted into a public charter school in 2013. Enrollment has fallen over the years, but the school's students and faculty are still sad to see it go.

They are sad, but resigned, and maybe just a little excited that new life is going to be injected into an icon of the Southwest Side -- if the board of the Chicago Public Schools approves Catalyst Education's bid to turn same-sex Maria High into Catalyst-Maria, a co-ed facility that would have children from kindergarten to the 12th grade eventually gracing all of its halls.

The spit and polish of this century-old school reflects the values at the core of what's taught here: Relationships, results and love -- even if vast swaths of it are empty. 

"It is a family," said Maria High School student council president Ashanti McCall. "it is weird to have males kind of violate that. It is going to be difficult." 

Maria High School President Wendy Lynn came to head this school three years ago and has watched as enrollment dropped by one-third from 2007. There are only 207 kids in class this year. There were upwards of 1,400 a generation ago.  "We see incremental progress in the fundraising, but our student enrollment is declining and I really think it has to be because of the economics," said Lynn. 

See Full Story:   http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8383594

Could this shuttering, and other Catholic closings that preceded it have been averted if parents in Illinois had a school choice option?   School choice is already an existing option already available in many other states.  Why not Illinois?  The answer to that question will follow.