CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - A South Side all-male Catholic high school will decide this summer whether to begin admitting young women, too.
For more than 120 years, Mt. Carmel High School in the Woodlawn neighborhood has educated young men from the South Side, south suburbs and Northwest Indiana. Now, school officials are considering whether to begin admitting young women, too, starting in the fall of 2023.
Carmelite provincial and former principal Fr. Carl Markelz says growth has been “elusive” for all single-gender schools in the archdiocese and that demographics show fewer students coming out of Catholic elementary schools now and in the future.
Current Mt. Carmel President Brendan Conroy asks, “What do we do to ensure that Mt. Carmel is around for the next 122 years?
Conroy says enrollment has been fairly steady for the past several years but trending downward. There are 575 students now. Twenty years ago, enrollment was more than 800. It was about a thousand in the school’s hey-day.
“We believe in all-boys education but with shrinking market overall for Catholic schools and the shrinking number who are seeking single-sex education within that shrinking market, you have to be realistic,” Conroy says.
Another way of looking at it, he says, is that, “You got to be aware of not only what you want to sell but what people want to buy.”
Conroy says, “We want to consider a change for the long haul, for the long future of Mt. Carmel while we’re in a position of strength.”
Over the next six weeks, Mt. Carmel plans in-person and Zoom information and listening sessions to get the opinions of alumni, donors, parents and students on whether the school should begin admitting young women in the fall of 2023.
Conroy says he’s already begun hearing from some of the 13,000 living alumni.
“Some are concerned that the experience that students would have in the future would be very different than their own, if there were young women in the seats. Others have said, “It’s about time. This is great. We think it’s a good idea.”
School leaders and the Carmelite religious order will make their final decisions on August 9 and 10 in separate meetings.
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