A “94-Year-Old Startup” High School Secures Its Future Through Campus Ownership November 19, 2025

For young men in St. Louis’ Dutchtown neighborhood, St. Mary’s South Side Catholic High School (St. Mary’s) is far more than an educational institution—it’s a portal to college, careers, and bright futures. Established in 1931 by the Archdiocese of St. Louis, St. Mary’s also serves as an essential anchor on the south side of St. Louis, with the school deeply woven into the fabric of the community. As public schools in the area closed, St. Mary’s remained a constant, providing a high-quality local option for secondary education and actively contributing to Dutchtown’s future through initiatives like the revitalization of vacant homes to facilitate affordable homeownership opportunities for first-time buyers.     

After serving Dutchtown for more than 90 years, St. Mary’s learned in September 2022 that the archdiocese planned to close the school at the end of the academic year as part of a citywide consolidation of parochial schools and parishes—sending a shockwave through the school community and its broad network of supporters.    

“The news that the archdiocese planned to close St. Mary’s was a true gut punch we did not see coming,” recalls St. Mary’s President Mike England. “All we could think about was how devastating this was going to be to the young men that we serve and to our Dutchtown neighborhood.”  

Rather than accepting the school’s fate and beginning preparations to wind down operations in the months ahead, however, England and school leaders quickly reached the conclusion that the loss of St. Mary’s simply wasn’t an option. For the group, the necessity of keeping St. Mary’s open was directly tied to its mission and the students it serves. The median annual income for families with students enrolled at the school is approximately $40,000, with almost every student at St. Mary’s receiving tuition assistance. With no guarantee that students would receive the same level of financial aid at other private schools, and limited public school options in Dutchtown, many of St. Mary’s families would be unable to afford tuition if forced to transfer to a different school. This also presented St. Mary’s with a major challenge, since raising its own tuition to support operations as an independent school would have priced out the very families the school was striving to remain open to serve. 

Despite the significant barriers the school would have to overcome to remain open without the financial support of the archdiocese, St. Mary’s leaders and alumni committed to do everything possible to ensure the school could continue to serve as a community asset for generations of south side St. Louisans to come. That decision has come to redefine St. Mary’s in the past three years, laying the foundation for a series of milestones that culminated in July 2025 with a $1.11 million loan from IFF that facilitated the now-independent school’s purchase of its 22.5-acre campus from the archdiocese to secure St. Mary’s long-term future.   

Forging a new path 

After making the decision to try to save St. Mary’s, England and his colleagues faced the monumental task of transitioning the school from archdiocese control to independence with no roadmap for the path ahead. Undeterred, the group worked feverishly over the next several months to plan its separation from the archdiocese, secure a new religious sponsor, negotiate a lease agreement for the St. Mary’s campus, and raise $3.3 million in donations to sustain St. Mary’s through its first year as an independent school. Successful in all of these efforts, St. Mary’s announced publicly in December 2022 that the school would remain open and, in January 2023, established a new 501(c)3—Southside Education Collaborative—to support the continued operation of the school.  

Despite these critical, immediate wins, the newly established nonprofit remained in a precarious position. As one board member outlined in a meeting shortly after the Southside Education Collaborative was launched, the school had no principal, no teachers, no benefits structure, no retirement plan, no established pay scale, and little money to operate on a long-term basis. Over the next year, the school systematically addressed each of these concerns by rebuilding its operations from the ground up. One of the most important decisions made during this period was to shift the school’s curriculum from that of a traditional high school to one that would better prepare students to secure high-wage careers after graduation.  

To accomplish this, St. Mary’s developed a fully funded pre-apprenticeship program in the trades in partnership with alumnus Jake Hummel, who serves as the president of the Missouri AFL-CIO. Envisioned as a flagship initiative for the “new” St. Mary’s, the program provides juniors and seniors with classroom projects, site visits to unions, mentorship, and direct exposure to 15 different trades. The students, who earn an OSHA 10 certification through the program, gain hands-on skills in areas like carpentry, welding, and more, giving them a head start in applying for full-time apprenticeship programs immediately after graduation. Furthermore, the school solidified a unique partnership with SSM Health, through which select seniors serve a yearlong internship with the health system’s HVAC and plumbing professionals, earning valuable field experience hours to help launch their careers. 

“We knew if we were going to stay open, we were going to have to become more than just a high school,” said England in a recent interview. “We’ve come up with a multi-part plan that we think will ensure this special place will continue its mission for future generations.” 

Securing a long-term home 

With a clear vision for the future of St. Mary’s, the focus soon shifted from operational independence to the actual infrastructure needed to execute on its plans. This process was expedited by the failure of a 30-year-old roof on the school’s gymnasium, resulting in a $235,000 repair bill. According to the terms of the school’s lease with the archdiocese, St. Mary’s was responsible for covering any maintenance or repairs needed on the campus, which includes five facilities totaling nearly 117,000 square feet. Still a fledgling organization, the cost of the repair was sobering, and the sticker shock increased soon after when the school cafeteria’s roof also began to fail. With an estimated repair cost of $275,000 for the cafeteria, St. Mary’s began pondering the implications of spending more than half a million dollars to repair and upgrade facilities the school didn’t own.   

“It was at that point that we decided we weren’t going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix somebody else’s asset,” explains England. “We couldn’t build a future for this school doing that. We had to own the property.” 

Through ownership of the campus, St. Mary’s saw a path to long-term stability by ensuring that investments in the campus would increase the value of the property and directly benefit students, rather than subsidizing a landlord. And while a generous St. Mary’s alumnus provided a donation to cover the cost of repairs to the school gymnasium, it became clear that the school needed financing to acquire the campus. That presented yet another challenge for St. Mary’s, since the school’s new, independent status made securing a loan from a traditional lender extremely unlikely.  

“We were a 94-year-old startup,” says England. “We had no credit, we didn’t own anything, we had no collateral; we had nothing. There was no bank we could go to. But for IFF, we would have had to use donations that we need to go toward our operations to purchase the campus. That would’ve been $1.1 million that should have gone toward educating our young men.” 

Having already gotten the campus appraised and working through a complex negotiation with the archdiocese on the purchase terms for the campus, St. Mary’s was able to move quickly on the acquisition of the property after being connected with IFF earlier this year. Almost immediately after the loan closed in July, St. Mary’s completed the purchase, with a portion of the loan also providing the capital needed to repair the cafeteria roof. On August 12, during an emotional press conference held just two days before the start of the new school year, England shared the news that, at long last, St. Mary’s owns its campus—and its future—for the first time. “We believe in what our neighborhood and city can be,” England announced at the conference. “The work ahead is imposing, but we will not and cannot become discouraged because we know we’re making a difference one person at a time.” 

Now fully in control of its future, St. Mary’s enrollment has increased by 17 percent to 235 students since separating from the archdiocese, providing the school with a much-needed boost as it continues to establish itself as an independent entity. On top of that, the school has been able to provide its teachers with eight percent raises over the past three years, bringing pay up to a competitive level and improving its ability to recruit quality educators. With these advancements and the ownership of its campus, St. Mary’s has firmly cemented its position as a permanent pillar of opportunity in the Dutchtown neighborhood. 

“The staff, the faculty, the students—we went through adversity together,” says England. “We had to have faith, and we had to be able to count on each other. And now that we’ve made it to where we are now, morale has never been higher. Owning our campus gives us the freedom to determine the future we want to build.”