After a few tough years, the Mennonite Collegiate Institute's (MCI) Board of Directors has made the difficult decision to pause operations of the private Christian school in Gretna, effective the end of June.
CEO, Kris Harms, says the timing of the announcement is unfortunate, but is tied to the fact that the decision was not made lightly.
"It puts people in a tough spot, finding out in the middle of June that their kids don't have a school year, potentially for Fall, and having to find alternate options. Even for staff, this isn't a great time of year to be looking for a job in the Education field. Most positions are filled."
He noted, officials spent months trying to build the necessary steps to keep the school open, adding every stone was turned over and options were pursued.
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Current format was unsustainable
Ultimately, said Harms, relationship break downs, and financial struggles made it clear the school couldn't continue in its current format.
"It's expensive to run a school. Costs just continue to increase. But trying to maintain tuition at a reasonable cost means the extra expenses are covered through donations.
Another factor is, many of our supporting churches have aging congregations and don't have a lot of children that they are able to send, and so that's also caused a decrease in enrolment."
While there's been years when MCI lost upwards of 50 students, Harms says most recently, it's been a slow decline. This year, there were 45 students enrolled at the school.
"Over time, with some of our supporting churches, there's been a greater distance with the school and changes in leadership," he said. "There's a lot of moving parts to that and, maybe, communication on our part hasn't been as good as it could have been so, many of those relationships are difficult. Along with that, in years past, some of those churches would have had a lot of students in the school and so they would have been hearing current information from their own parents, their own church constituents. A number of our churches haven't sent a director for a number of years. So, a lot of the avenues of communication would have, I would say, just diminished over time so now, as we're going through some of these challenges, they don't have a personal connection to it."
What will it take?
So, what needs to happen in order for MCI to reopen and be successful?
Harms believes it comes down to building relationships that have different ways of investing in the school.
"So, we have a lot of relationships now that have invested significantly from a financial aspect, which has been great, but we need more students in order to run a school effectively. I think an increased and relationship base with churches and groups that have children that are high school aged, so that we have a holistic approach where we're growing the school through students while still having that strong financial support."
And is there a plan or an idea of how to accomplish that?
Harms said there's been a lot of conversations happening behind-the-scenes with many churches of different denominations that, he feels many of which, are interested in having a Christian education option.
"But it takes times to develop some of those relationships and build some depth where there's that trust and that partnership."
Difficult news to hear
As a result of the Board's decision, teacher contracts have ended, and no programming is planned for the new school year that starts in September.
Harms says it's been tough news for staff to hear.
"We've got a lot of long-term staff and that realization that this could be the end is really difficult to process for them."
It's also been hard on the students, particularly those in grade 11 who are heading to grade 12 next year.
"That would have been their graduation year. So, if we are in fact done or paused, I would say there would be a lot of disappointment, a lot of difficult conversations and sadness there of being unsure what next year looks like for them and where they're going to go to school."