Queen of Martyrs Elementary School will not reopen for the 2026-27 school year, Archdiocese of Chicago officials announced on June 15.<\/p>\n
In a letter to the school community, Archdiocese Superintendent of Schools Greg Richmond said the decision follows \u201ca significant decline in projected enrollment,\u201d leaving the school without the necessary resources to sustain future operations.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Queen of Martyrs faced a scandal involving a substitute teacher with a history of child molestation allegations who was working at the school in January.<\/p>\n
Brett Smith, a 43-year-old Tinley Park resident, was subsequently fired and barred from working in Archdiocese of Chicago schools.<\/p>\n
Officials said the scandal \u201cshook the trust of some families and contributed to their decision to leave.\u201d However, the Archdiocese said that the school had been facing prior enrollment challenges.<\/p>\n
In 2016, enrollment was more than 325 students; this past school year, it fell to 178 students.<\/p>\n
Projected enrollment for the 2026-27 school year was about 140 students. Officials said the projections would result in a deficit of more than $400,000 next year.<\/p>\n
The Rev. Benedykt Pazdan, pastor of St. Gianna Molla Parish, the combined church of Queen of Martyrs and St. Bernadette, said the Archdiocese and parish leadership will work to support families and staff members during the transition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis school has been a place of faith, learning, friendship, sacrifice and love for many years,\u201d Pazdan said in a voicemail to parishioners. \u201cIts legacy will not be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
An expanded article will appear in the June 24 issue of The Beverly Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queen of Martyrs Elementary School will not reopen for the 2026-27 school year, Archdiocese of Chicago officials announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[103474,9,24,12,63,122,124,123,103473],"class_list":["post-267788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-community_news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-top_story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}