By Ben Joravsky
The preschool will remain open, at least for another year and probably much longer, because requests for applications have been pouring in since word of the impending closing hit the street. “There’s a lot of lessons you can learn from this, because we faced a situation lots of community groups face,” says Charlie McBarron, a parent active in the effort to keep the school open. “This was a classic case where a big institution dug in its heels on an idea even though it made no sense. Then you have to spend so much time trying one way or another to get them to see the light. You have to give Loyola credit. When we forced the issue, they changed. How many institutions would do that?”
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As far as the university was concerned, the cut was an obvious one. The preschool’s enrollment was down and it had lost nearly $90,000 last year. “This was not a personal decision directed at anyone in particular–it was strictly a budget decision based on the best needs of Loyola,” university spokesperson Elizabeth Wilson said only last week. “We’ve been operating at a deficit, and the university’s board said it had to stop.”
Beyond harsh, the decision seemed misguided. Yes, the preschool needed more children. But Loyola hadn’t tried to market it to the community. Donovan thought that the university was acknowledging this failing when it hired her last summer and told her to erase the deficit by increasing enrollment.
“Closing it doesn’t even make sense from a financial point of view. They just spent all that money converting the apartment units into a school. They just brought Beverly in to run it. Now they’re going to just throw that investment away?”
“Now I know that one issue the parents have with us is the time frame. It was unsettling for them to have this closing just suddenly announced. Well, one reason that it was one of the first announcements of cuts was to allow families the time to make appropriate changes. I’m a parent of two daughters, and I know how upsetting any changes in the routine can be. We thought this was the humane way to do what we had to do.”
