Days before the school year is to begin, students at Lincoln-Way North High in Frankfurt, Ill., got the bad news Thursday night that the campus will be closed at the end of the academic year.

WLS-TV reports that Lincoln-Way (Ill.) High School District 210, based in New Lenox, voted to close one of its four campuses as it tries to dig itself out of a deep financial hole.

Lincoln-Way North opened in 2008 and Lincoln-Way West opened in 2009 when projections envisioned district enrollment would climb to 10,000. But development slowed in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, and now, about 7,000 students attend four underutilized Lincoln-Way high schools.

Lincoln-Way has a $33 million budget deficit that has earned it a spot on the state's financial watch list. Closing Lincoln-Way North is expected to save about $4 million a year.

"Change is never easy, but it’s critical that we begin to put Lincoln-Way back on a path toward fiscal sustainability so that we can preserve the very important tradition of providing the outstanding academic and social opportunities that our students deserve," Superintendent R. Scott Tingley says in a district newsletter before the vote was taken.