Loretto is jumping ship…..

Fifteen years down the road-

Mother-“Hey little Rickey that strip mall over there is where I used to go to school”
Little rickey- “You used to go to school in a strip mall?”
How does that conversation sound?

hmmmm....

At the end of this school year Loretto high school is getting the ax. The struggling economy and a ridiculously low number of students is causing the school to turn belly up. Many many girls that I know are very sad to see their alma mater go but if you can’t make ends meet something has got to give.
For those of you not from the 916 or the 530 (What what) Loretto is an all girls high school in the Sacramento area. There are five catholic high schools in the Sac town area. Jesuit (my alma mater), St. Francis (the other all girls school), Loretto (who is going belly up), and Christian Brothers (coed private school), and then St. Stepehens Academy (who the hell are they?).
So yes it is sad to see this school go but for all those people who think that joining a web site and making a petition to save Loretto on facebook is going to work, well I have news for you. It aint. Unless you are selling ad space on the web site which requires mass amounts of traffic or raising money to keep the school open, these petitions are about as useful as the tell me 25 things about yourself viral post that is going around facebook.
If you truly want to keep Loretto open there is one thing that has to happen. It needs to make money. I don’t know how much money it takes to run a high school but I am guessing that 2,500,000 a year will not cut it (I hear there was around 250 girls enrolled times 10 grand in tuition a year=2.5 mil).
Why is Loretto struggling and not the other big three? Tradition and appeal. Lets start with Chrstain Brothers. CB is coed thus it appeals to the guys and girls who do not want that single sex education but still want the college preparatory. Tuition there last I heard was $9,000.00 and the enrolment was 1,088 students. Doing the math here that gives up $9,792,000.00 in money coming into the school.
Saint Francis has a tuition of $10,900 a year. Enrollment is 1065 females. That means they are bringing in a whopping $11,608,500 dollars. They also have a much stronger tradition in athletic excellence and appeal for the average girl coming out of parochial middle school. Sorry Loretto I love you but the numbers tell all.
J-J-JES-U-U-UIT JES-UIT you know the rest. Tuition is $11,230 a year. Enrollment is 1,085 guys. That means they are bringing in $12,184,550 a year. Jesuit also boast that they receive anywhere from 400 to 600 applications a year. The numbers for the big three (JHS, CB, SF) do the talking for themselves hence the reason they are not struggling.
Speaking on the behalf of Jesuit if there were in a financial crisis and there was possibilities of going bankrupt, the tradition of the school would save it. There would be alumni lining up out the door to donate money to keep the school afloat. What is the tradition that Jesuit has that Loretto does not? It’s hard to explain its more than just school pride, academic excellence, and athletic domination (at least when I was there ’03 section sweep in the fall including an undefeated football season and one more section championship in the spring). When I went off to college I had buddies that still bled the the red and gold and would not give up the pride for Jesuit even though we all ended up in the same place. It something that is given through the teachers, the students, and the experience.

I never saw this at Loretto

It is something that I did not see my sister get at Loretto but my brother did receive at Jesuit five years later. It is the difference of staying afloat in hard times as opposed to sinking when the going gets tough.
So Loretto if you want to save your school prove me wrong and show me that you walked away from your high school experience with more than a bitchen education, show me you walked away with that pride and tradition I received from Jesuit. Stop making groups on facebook and start donating money and getting in contact with your fellow alums to donate money if Loretto truly means that much for you. Facebook groups will only do so much and we all know that money talks. Get through the next year with donated money and and make sure that enrollment increases. I know I am stating the obvious but it is time to face reality. Save Loretto face book groups are about as useful as teachers walking around dances with flashlights.

As I learned at Jesuit and something I should pass on to you ladies
Be a man for others-