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Queen of Peace High School Burbank Ill

Catholic girls high school in south suburban Chicago will close

Jan. 27, 2017
Low enrollment is blamed for the shuttering of Queen of Peace High School in Burbank, Ill.

A Catholic girls high school in a southwest suburb of Chicago will close at the end of the school year.

Queen of Peace High School in Burbank, Ill., announced in a letter on its web site that it is shutting its doors after more than 50 years because of low enrollment.

Established in 1962, the school has enrolled more than 15,000 students over 55 years.

“This has been a most difficult and heart-breaking decision,” says Queen of Peace president Anne O’Malley, a 1975 Queen of Peace graduate. “The financial realities and declining enrollment over the past 10 years make it impossible to sustain a superior four-year academic experience for the bright and deserving young women of Chicago’s south side.”

The annual per student cost to educate is $15,500, but tuition at Queen of Peace is $10,500. More than 60 percent of students require financial assistance throughout their four years of high school.

“We appreciate all of our invaluable donors and longtime supporters, but we simply have not been able to raise the more than $1 million above and beyond tuition required each year to continue to ensure a quality education,” says O’Malley.

Designed to accommodate 1,400 students in the 1960s, the school in 2016-17 has an enrollment of 288.

Queen of Peace has established a transition team to help students identify the best options for completing their high school education.

The Queen of Peace campus is adjacent to an all-boys Catholic high school, St. Laurence, but officials there say there are no plans to become a co-ed school, DNAinfo Chicago reports.

St. Laurence Principal James Muting says the school is on solid ground with an enrollment of 530 that has increased steadily in each of the last four years.

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Mike Kennedy | Senior Editor

Mike Kennedy, senior editor, has written for AS&U on a wide range of educational issues since 1999.

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