The 30 elementary students who attend St. Joseph’s Catholic School have been emptying their piggy banks in recent weeks.

“I’ve collected $350 from children,” Principal Dawna Edmonds said. “Last week a kid handed me a paper bag with $54 in it.”

The children of St. Joseph’s and their family members are fighting to save this tiny, rural parochial school from closing after more than 90 years in operation. On Wednesday, church committees will meet to decide whether St. Joseph’s parents and school council have devised an acceptable plan to keep the school alive through a combination of higher tuition, increased fundraising and a staff restructuring.

‘Wing and a prayer’ school

It may seem like a long shot to some, but it’s not the first time the school has been on the brink of closing.

“I call it ‘wing and a prayer’ school,” Edmonds said. “It’s lived on a wing and a prayer for 20 years. The parish has bailed us out over and over.”

The numbers that Edmonds cites are stark: The school costs about $140,000 to operate each year, but tuition brings in less than $20,000 a year.

The children, who wear a uniform of red shirts and dark pants or skirts, know exactly what the problem is.

“Money,” fifth-grader Jessie Frakes said in between bites of potatoes during lunch in the school’s basement cafeteria. “It’s not just a money problem. We used to have, like, 100 students.”

That was about 20 years ago, before the Jefferson County North middle school and elementary school opened just down the road in the mid-1990s. Nortonville, population 620, lost residents throughout the 1990s and the population of neighboring Valley Falls remained the same, even though the overall population of Jefferson County grew.

For many Jefferson County residents, it’s too expensive or inconvenient to take their kids to St. Joseph’s.

“There’s just not enough students out there to increase enrollment significantly,” said the Rev. John Reynolds, priest at St. Joseph’s parish.

What to do

Two years ago, the Kansas City archdiocese started a program to recruit young teachers to work at St. Joseph’s and to have their tuition paid while they pursued master’s degrees – a move church leaders hoped would help attract more students. But the program didn’t get off the ground, Edmonds said, in part because it was hard to find teachers willing to take the assignment.

“The young people are leaving. That’s why these small towns are dying,” said Steve Kagin, who has two children who attend St. Joseph’s and is the husband of a teacher there.

In Lawrence, St. John’s and Corpus Christi Catholic Schools – the first near downtown, the other on the city’s west side – are growing. Last year, they became two independent schools after operating for seven years as the two-campus Lawrence Catholic School. St. John’s has 230 elementary students and Corpus Christi has 220, and leaders at both parishes said they expected those numbers to grow in years ahead.

Tuition at St. Joseph’s is $1,050 per year for one child, $1,400 for two children, and $1,650 for three or more. By contrast, the Lawrence schools are free to members of the parish – with the expectation that their families give a certain percentage of their income to the church – and $4,500 per student for nonmembers.

Even with that higher tuition, Lawrence’s Catholic schools still rely on their parishioners for support.

“The commitment to Catholic education is very expensive,” said the Rev. John Schmeidler, priest at St. John’s, 1234 Ky.

‘A school worth saving’

Not all the children who attend St. Joseph’s are Catholic, nor are any of the full-time teachers, as of right now. But faith permeates the school day, whether it’s the Ten Commandments hanging in the entryway, the twice-weekly Masses, or the daily Angelus prayers. It’s the only state-accredited, faith-based school in Jefferson County.

“They get a lot more one-on-one attention than they would anywhere else,” Kagin said.

Students are grouped into three classes: kindergarten and first grade; second and third grade; and fourth, fifth and sixth grades.

It became clear after a Feb. 27 meeting of the parish’s leadership that the school may not remain open next year. Since then, parents have put together a proposal that includes a $200-per-student tuition increase and a plan to raise an additional $15,000 to $20,000 per year through more fundraising events.

They’re also looking at either cutting the principal’s job to part-time or combining it with a teaching job – all while raising teachers’ pay to what Edmonds calls a “more just” level than the $14,000 they earn.

“It’s a school worth saving,” said Kathy Shobe, who teaches kindergarten and first grade. “It’s going to take a great amount of parental support and probably a look at some other financial routes to support it.”

Reynolds said a parishioner asked him last week at a church fish fry whether the school would make it.

“I just said ‘I can’t tell,'” he said. “It’s just a tough call.”