ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis all-girls charter school has announced its closure shortly before the start of the new school year.
Hawthorne Leadership School for Girls, located on Kingshighway Boulevard in the city's Kingsway West neighborhood, will close at the end of the month due to low enrollment, school leaders announced in a Tuesday letter.
The school, which opened in 2015, teaches grades 6-12 with a focus on STEM. It enrolled about 120 students in the 2021-22 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
"Although our Board of Directors was optimistic that Hawthorn would reach our student enrollment targets for the coming school year, we were not able to attain the necessary scale and are now faced with the realities of program and budget constraints," the letter stated.
Leaders listed several factors that led to the drop in enrollment, including the city's shifting demographics and declining population and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"While we have operated well as a small school, the prohibitive per-student cost of providing a quality educational program for our small student body has led us to this extremely difficult decision," the school said.
Leaders apologized for the disruption the closure would cause so close to the start of the school year.
"There is no good time to close a school," the letter said, adding that leaders had until very recently been hopeful to increase its enrollment enough to stay open.
"We will work tirelessly over the coming days and weeks to find quality school placements for our students, support our families as they navigate this change, and assist our faculty and staff as they transition to new positions at other schools for the coming academic year," the letter said. "Hawthorn remains a strong and committed community."
Washington University, the school's sponsor, released a statement on Wednesday:
"We support the difficult decision made by the Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls Board of Trustees to close the school. We know this action was not taken lightly or without great consideration for the impact the closure will have on Hawthorn students, families and staff. We appreciate Hawthorn School’s accomplishments in preparing young women for academic success over the past eight years and wish all who are associated with the school the very best in their future endeavors."
Read the full letter from Hawthorne school leaders on the school's website.