2 suburban Chicago Catholic schools closing in June, citing loss of scholarship tax credit program

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Two Catholic schools in the western suburbs announced Thursday night that will close after the end of the school year, with the Archdiocese of Chicago blaming the loss of a state tax credit scholarship program.

St. Frances of Rome School in Cicero and St. Odilo School in Berwyn both will close in June. Teachers and staff at the schools will be offered jobs at other Catholic schools in the Chicago area.

The closures come months after Illinois state lawmakers ended the Invest in Kids state tax credit scholarship program, which provides tax credits to people who donate private funding to scholarships for private schools. The program expired at the end of Dec. 31.

The archdiocese said more than half of the students at St. Frances and St. Odilo rely on the Invest in Kids program to attend their schools.

"While we have navigated tight budgets in the past, the loss of the scholarship program has created an insurmountable gap," said Rev. Radek Jaszcuk, pastor of St. Frances of Rome School.

The closures leave only two other Catholic schools in Berwyn and Cicero, and parents of students at St. Frances and St. Odilo have been encouraged to consider those schools for next year.

"Catholic schools are doing well academically and interest among families is strong," said Greg Richmond, superintendent of Catholic schools. "We believe the best way to keep Catholic education alive and thriving in Cicero and Berwyn is to consolidate our efforts on supporting one excellent school in each community. In this situation, trying to sustain four schools would have jeopardized all of them in the future. We are doing all that we can to keep our schools open, but the loss of the scholarship program will hurt. These may not be the last closures in our archdiocese."