Enrollment is shrinking at La Reina, but not all local Catholic schools are struggling

When the news of La Reina High School and Middle School's looming closure dropped like a bomb on the Thousand Oaks campus last month, school leaders singled out one clear trend.

Enrollment at the all-girls Catholic school fell by 53% in the last eight years, then-President Tony Guevara said in a Jan. 24 email to the school community, from 575 middle and high school students down to 268. Guevara said the decline, combined with dwindling reserves, made the school unsustainable.

La Reina is not unique among Catholic schools nor is it unique among schools in general. At last check, U.S. Catholic schools had still not recovered their pre-pandemic enrollment. In California, enrollment from transitional kindergarten to grade 12 has been on the decline for two decades.

But some Catholic schools in Ventura County have bucked the trend. Among the 18 Catholic schools in the county who submit reports to the state each October, overall enrollment this fall was higher than in fall 2019, the last count before the pandemic.

La Reina, by contrast, remains 10 students fewer than the autumn of the 2019-20 school year.

The trajectory for county Catholic schools appears to have reversed after at least a three-year drop in the years before the pandemic.

Most of that recovery is in grades K-8. With 2,772 elementary and middle schoolers, the lower grades are even larger than in 2017-18, when they had 2,711 students.

High school cohorts remain stubbornly small. Catholic high schools in Ventura County had 1,154 students this year, down from 1,316 in the fall before the pandemic and 1,471 two years before that.

A national problem

John Beltramo, a lecturer at Santa Clara University who directs university Catholic education programs, has had his eye on Catholic school enrollment around the country for a decade as a researcher and years before that as an administrator, teacher and student.

He said Catholic schools have been watching enrollment go down for years by 3% to 4% annually. The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, looked to him like the "death knell" as enrollment numbers nationally tanked.

But Catholic schools tended to reopen from pandemic closures earlier than their public counterparts, Beltramo said, and that helped them draw in new students in 2021 and 2022.

The National Catholic Educational Association, which gathers national data each year, has not published numbers this year, but Beltramo said the numbers he's seen so far are a return to the pre-pandemic downward trend.

Ventura County's 18 Catholic schools have seen their enrollment improve faster than the average set by the nearly 6,000 U.S. Catholic schools. Including La Reina, just three high schools and two elementary schools haven't gotten back to pre-pandemic enrollment.

A few, mostly elementary schools, have more students than they have in years. Santa Clara Elementary School in Oxnard and St. Mary Magdalen School in Camarillo are both bigger than they were in 2017.

Mother of Divine Grace School, an Ojai-based K-12 program that on its website says it offers a "Catholic, classical approach to distance learning," grew from 422 to 569 students between 2019 and 2023, an increase of 35%.

The numbers, pulled from the state's database, might not tell the whole story. On its website, Mother of Divine Grace says that it serves more than 6,300 students. The school's communications team did not respond to requests for comment.

Villanova Preparatory School, in Ojai, enrolled 266 students this year, just barely returning to its pre-pandemic level.

Suzanne Feldman, the school's director of admissions, said the boarding school got there by adding middle school grades to the high school boarding campus for the first time this year.

The middle schoolers — none of whom live on campus ― backfilled the school's dwindling high school ranks, but Feldman noted that the school's freshman class this year also increased.

Feldman said the school is likely to have another big freshman class this fall, partially supplemented by former La Reina students. The school is matching scholarships and financial aid for those transfers, Feldman said.

"We're lucky to have the resources we do. They embody what is great about Catholic education," she said. "We work with families to make Villanova possible."

Despite short-term bumps for some schools, the long-term picture could be bleak. Beltramo said shrinking numbers in the Catholic church at large have eaten into enrollment from multiple angles.

Fewer families in Sunday Mass means fewer children for schools, he said, but it also means non-Catholics know fewer Catholics and are less familiar with what Catholic schools could offer their own children.

Fewer Catholics means fewer donors to fund the scholarships that enable some families to afford paying tuition.

Fewer religious sisters and brothers in Catholic orders, Beltramo said, means higher tuition. Schools like La Reina, which was founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame, have historically been staffed by religious orders. Their ranks, Beltramo said, came cheaper than the lay staff who have replaced them as orders have shrunk over the years.

"For a long time, orders were subsidizing school through their labor," Beltramo said. "Now, parents are feeling the real cost of education."

The enrollment question, Beltramo said, is a microcosm of the problems in front of the entire Catholic church.

"The Catholic church is trying to figure out: How do we get people to come back?" he said.

St. Bonaventure High School in Ventura has 373 students — 44 fewer than in 2019 ― but Director of Admissions Wolfgang Wood said the school's enrollment is back on a positive trajectory after two freshman classes closer to pre-pandemic sizes.

The school's enrollment might be getting a boost from its athletics success. The Seraphs' football team played for a state championship in December and its boys' basketball team, coached by Wood, played in a second sectional championship final in a row on Saturday.

More: Miraculous comeback puts St. Bonaventure into state football championship game

Roughly 70% of the student body is on a sports team, Wood said, but the school is also investing heavily in its arts and theater programs.

"Sports have historically been a draw," he said. "The arts program is starting to shine through."

Wood, on staff at the school for four years and in charge of admissions for two, said the school's composition has changed over the last few years. The proportion of new students coming from public schools and home schools, as opposed to lifetime Catholic schoolers, has increased. "We're adding students from different walks," he said.

Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @isaiahmurtaugh and @vcsschools. You can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: La Reina's enrollment is shrinking, but the local trend differs