On Friday, Block Club Chicago reported that St. Stanislaus Kostka announced the closure of its school after more than 150 years of serving children.  The church and school, known as the “mother church of Chicago Polonia,” is well-known to anyone who’s driven down the Kennedy, and in fact it was nicknamed “the parish that moved an expressway” because in the 50s the Polish community rallied to prevent its demolition and forced the Kennedy to be re-routed.  In the early 1900s, the school enrolled 4,000 children, and in the 60s, according to a longtime parishioner, there were thousands in attendance at each mass, but now that Polish community has moved on, “you’re lucky to get 50 people for a Mass.”

Now, according to the Pastor’s Facebook post, the school is facing a $500,000 deficit at the end of this year, due in large measure to the end of the Invest In Kids scholarship program which served as a lifeline there, with 85% of students benefitting from those scholarships.

When Pritzker and the legislature ended the scholarship program in 2023, teachers’ unions portrayed it as an unfair giveaway to the wealthy, but the closing of Catholic schools (four schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago alone in 2024 and 2025) since then highlights the importance of that program merely to preserve schools which have been such an important part of the city and state’s history.  Even with the relatively small number of children affected, money from this scholarship program had a significant effect at the margin, making the difference between balanced budgets and deficits, and the money lost was too much for parish fundraising to close the gap.  Preserving the existing parochial school system by maintaining the scholarships would be highly cost-effective compared to the additional costs the state and school districts will now have of the children moving to public schools, as well as the disrupted communities and the wasted resources of empty buildings – and it’s long acknowledged that Catholic and other church-based schools serve the entire community rather than just their own faith groups.

I call on the legislature to restore these scholarships or institute a similar program to avoid the even greater loss of more Catholic (and other nonpublic) schools in the years to come.