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The Star of the Sea School building pictured April 18. The school in San Francisco's Richmond District s "rebooting, not closing," Star of the Sea pastor Father Joseph Illo said in an April 12 blog providing background on the surprise April 3 announcement that the K-8 school will temporarily close in June as it attempts to adopt a classical education model. (Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)
Updated April 14, 2019, 1:20 p.m., with new comment from Father Illo.
April 3, 2019
Rick DelVecchio
Catholic San FranciscoStar of the Sea School, a 110-year-old Catholic neighborhood institution in San Francisco's Richmond District, will suspend classes at the end of the school year in June amid "unforeseen challenges" as the parish K-8 school attempts to adopt a classical education curriculum.
Star pastor Father Joseph Illo and the Archdiocese of San Francisco jointly announced the decision today in an April 3 post on the archdiocesan website.
"The school will continue its preschool classes uninterrupted and will build greater collaboration between the fully enrolled preschool and the elementary school," the announcement said. "After much consultation, the decision has been made to take the necessary time to develop an Integrated Classical Program, including curriculum development, marketing strategy, and effective business model."
In an April 12 blog post, Father Illo said the school is "not closing but 'rebooting.' It is not what I would have wanted, and in fact many of us spent ten months, and sustained a $700,000 deficit, trying to maintain classes uninterrupted as enrollment sank.
"The deal breaker, for at least a vocal group of parents (who do not attend the parish), was restoring the school as a ministry of the parish. For many years the school had run itself functionally independent of the parish. One parent posted on social media, for example, that 'Star of the Sea School and the adjoining church share a name and real estate, but not leadership and members. The two organizations are technically separate, and most of the students and their parents are not members of the church.' Exactly. The fact that some parents would think a parish school was “technically separate” from its parish called for some healthy reintegration.
"It is quite understandable how, in such a situation, some would resist parish oversight," Father Illo continued. "In the end, those opposed to integration were vocal enough to sink enrollment. My heart goes out to students and families who must find another school, especially those who wanted to stay at Star of the Sea.
"But, God willing, it is not the end of our school," Father Illo concluded. "The search has begun for an educator with experience in starting a classical school eager to meet the particular challenges at Star of the Sea. We are welcoming resumes, and, with God’s help, will build on our fully-enrolled preschool to resume upper classes with an Integrated Classical Program beginning August 2020."
View the blog post here: http://www.frilloblog.com/blog/closing-the-school-not.
In a statement to parents earlier on the day the suspension was announced, Father Illo said the parish "has done everything possible to maintain classes uninterrupted during this time of transition. Due to unforeseen challenges, however, we now see that it is wiser to take additional time to properly study, design, market and fund this new model. We regret that we must suspend classes because of projected low enrollment for the upcoming school year.
“This has been a difficult and uncertain period for many school parents, some of whom have strongly expressed their concerns and reluctance to this development," Father Illo said. "There has also been a good deal of positive interest in moving forward with this new model."
Father Illo said he is "looking forward to working with people who are eager to develop this kind of school in San Francisco."
He expressed gratitude to school faculty and staff for their work with parish staff to develop the new program. "I also continue to be grateful to the Department of Catholic Schools for the expertise they bring to help us develop this exciting education format," he said.
Pamela Lyons, superintendent of Catholic schools for the archdiocese, said, “While I am saddened by the suspension of classes at Star of the Sea School, I agree that moving to a new model of education takes careful strategic planning in order to offer a quality Catholic program that benefits our students and families."
She said "it would have been ideal" if the transition could have taken place with enough students to financially sustain the school.
"However, that just isn’t the case," she said. "Star of the Sea School has a rich history of educating the Catholic children of San Francisco and I see no reason why that history will not continue in the near future.”
The announcement provided no details about finances or enrollment. However, the San Francisco Examiner reported April 2 that only 40 to 50 students had committed to re-enrolling , less than a quarter of 2017-2018 enrollment.
In a letter to faculty and staff, Father Illo said, "I can scarcely imagine the difficulty in maintaining a stable classroom environment in the confusion that ensued this year, and especially as you saw your students leaving throughout the school year."
The archdiocese will work to assure that displaced students are relocated to other schools in the archdiocese, "as well as assuring that our beloved faculty can secure teaching positions within our school system if they so desire," Father Illo said in his letter to parents.
"I much regret the upset this suspension of classes will cause families, and had hoped to avoid it," he said. "Knowing that God will provide for us all, I wish you and your children the best education the Catholic Church can provide."
The new curriculum was featured in an article in the Jan. 11, 2019, issue of Catholic San Francisco.
The article described classical education as a traditional educational model that seeks truth, goodness and beauty through the study of the liberal arts and literature’s “great books.” It said a classical model typically teaches subjects including the study of Latin in ways that are developmentally appropriate for children at different ages.
The article quoted Star principal David Gallagher as saying the merits of a classical school education in both public and private schools have been largely “pushed aside” by progressive education programs championed by philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952),
Gallagher, a longtime teacher at Star, was hired last summer after the death of longtime principal Terrence Hanley in 2017.
“Catholic schools, all of them, do a great job with reading, writing and mathematics,” Gallagher said in the article. "I think we’ve always done that and we will always continue to do that. Where a classical education differs is that we are trying to create virtue in our students. We are not just trying to point students toward a career but providing them with a knowledge base where they can go on to any career area they want.”
In a March 4 letter posted on the school's website, Gallagher provided an update on curriculum development toward a classical framework. "The first of our efforts to move in this direction will be integrating the Humanities: Religion, Language Arts, and History," he wrote. "We believe that the integration of content from one subject to another will give our students a wide comprehension of history and the achievements of mankind."
In the Catholic San Francisco article in January, eighth grade homeroom and religion and English teacher Debra Dharmer said she “fell in love” with classical education in the process of converting to Catholicism a few years ago. Classical education “respects the intelligence of the student and the teacher,” she said.
“Classical education integrates knowledge into a larger whole,” Dharmer said. “There is actually a heritage that precedes every great work.”
Dharmer believes that a classical education might relieve the sense of fragmentation, depression and anxiety that afflicts some young people.
“You can make a leap here, but as someone who’s been working with middle school kids for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of mental health issues in terms of anxiety and depression,” she said. “Young people today feel really disconnected. I feel that in many ways a classical education can mitigate that by connecting them to a larger story.”
As a parish, Star of the Sea has become a success story in terms of Mass attendance, ministry activity, physical upkeep and finances, Father Illo wrote in the cover story for the March 22 edition of the Catholic Herald, a national magazine. He reposted the article on his blog March 27.
"Four years ago the Archbishop of San Francisco assigned me to the Star of the Sea, a large and beautifully Catholic building. Its statues, stained glass, marble altar and altar rail were still intact, but, like the entire parish, languishing in dilapidation. Mass attendance had dropped precipitously since the Italians and Irish began moving to the suburbs in the 1980s," he wrote. "The aggressive secularism of the last decade seemed to seal the fate of this once thriving parish, and the archdiocese began talking about a 'merger.'
"The other day a priest who had served 10 years ago at Star of the Sea remarked on the parish’s 'amazing revival,'” Father Illo continued. "Mass attendance has been growing annually at 12 per cent, and income has more than doubled. We’ve planted flowers and shrubs, installed new lighting, restored the marble sanctuary and flung the doors wide open to the city. The parish school begins an Integrated Classical Curriculum (consisting of grammar, logic and rhetoric) this autumn, and parishioners are caring for the homeless and advocating for the elderly and unborn."
An anonymous website called welovestarsf.com provides a different perspective, detailing conflicts between Father Illo and some parents surrounding and predating the curriculum shift. A "vibrant and flourishing school" with 250 students five years ago eventually dwindled to 60, as "families were handed the heavy burden of having to uproot their children to find a new school that would better educate and protect their children," according to a March 5 post on the website.
A March 31 post titled "Killing our School" tagged a National Catholic Reporter article detailing struggles at Star, including a contentious parent meeting March 7. The article references a "formal complaint" submitted to the archdiocese by an anonymous parent group. The March 11 complaint cites a "well documented turbulent history" with Father Illo and the school community, saying his approach "has decimated the student population at the school in the last two years."
In response to media questions about the complaint, archdiocesan spokesman Mike Brown said "there won’t be a formal public response, largely because the complainants chose to be anonymous (so who do you respond to?)"
He said many attendees at the meeting were interviewed by the schools department and "it seems clear that there was a brief, loud disagreement during the meeting and that no one was seriously threatened by either side, as some complainants charged. The conclusion seems to be that the meeting was a loosely organized and contentious meeting but nothing more dramatic."
In response to a request for comment from Catholic San Francisco, Father Illo said, "Much of what has been posted on social media, especially about the March 7 parents' meeting, is inaccurate, out of context, or simply false, and much of it from anonymous sources.
"Many parishioners and other parents eagerly want what the parish has to offer in the way of Catholic education," he added. "They are expressing hurt and frustration over the negativity that has led to the suspension of classes."
Father Illo also said that many parents were excited about a classical curriculum "but what some could simply not accept was reintegrating the school as a ministry of the parish."
View these other articles about Star of the Sea from the CSF archive:
Star of the Sea to become archdiocese's first classical academy
"The priest's role in the Mass is an act of Fatherhood," by Father Joseph Illo
Countercultural San Francisco parish attracts growing congregation