Parents hope to keep Villa Augustina School open

By STEPHEN BEALE
Union Leader Correspondent
 
GOFFSTOWN - Representatives of the Religious of Jesus and Mary last night said they would stop funding and running the Villa Augustina School by the end of the current academic year, but parents remained unshakable in their determination to keep it open.

Sister Janet Stolba, a trustee of the school and the Provincial Superior for the American province of the religious order, said the decision came on the heels of several studies and reports that showed that revenue from tuition is failing to keep up with the ever-higher costs the 90-year-old school is facing.

The school, according to Stolba, has been running deficits for several years.

Even though tuition has risen 28 percent since 2005, the cost of educating a student is still $1,000 more than the nearly $4,000 parents are paying for the current academic year. Overall, the school is short approximately $200,000 for the current year.

A factor in the financial issues is the decline in the number of sisters working in the school, according to Stolba.

At its founding, the Villa Augustina was an all-girls boarding school staffed entirely by members of the Religious of Jesus and Mary. Now only three members of the order remain at the school.

As deficits grow, the school is confronted with even larger financial hurdles to clear, Stolba told parents last night. She said a consultant had estimated that the repairs required to bring the building up to code and in line with New Hampshire Department of Education standards could be as high as $5.6 million.

"We faced a very difficult decision," Stolba told parents. "It is a very painful thing to communicate and it is a very painful thing to hear."

But it is far from certain that the Villa Augustina school will close after it loses its support from the religious order next June.

Parents last night were not lacking in ideas for how to continue operating the school. One suggested raising tuition by $1,000. Another asked if the order could sell any properties it owns in the area to bolster the school finances.

Toward the end of the meeting, the discussion turned to how the school could be saved.

Pressed repeatedly by parents, Stolba promised to work with them on a plan to transition the school to a nonprofit corporation that would own and operate it. Stolba said the order would provide parents in a week with a checklist of things that need to be done to turn ownership over to a parent group.

She also said she would be willing to meet with a parent group in January to review a proposal they have for buying the school.

The Religious of Jesus and Mary own one other school in the United States, a Montessori school in New York. 

The order once had seven schools under its control in the country. 

Reproduced by the Goffstown Residents Association.