Diocese considers moving Judge Memorial, Our Lady of Lourdes schools

Intermountain Catholic

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School officials have struggled for years with space issues at Judge Memorial Catholic High School, which sits on just 4.4 acres.

SALT LAKE CITY — To help ensure a viable future for Catholic education in Utah, the Diocese of Salt Lake City is exploring consolidating the campuses of Judge Memorial Catholic High School and Our Lady of Lourdes and Kearns-St. Ann elementary schools on 14.4-acres of property it owns around St. Ann Catholic Church at 2119 South 400 East in South Salt Lake.

Utah Catholic Schools Superintendent Mark Longe announced that the diocese is considering selling the property of the current Judge Memorial/Our Lady of Lourdes campus in an Oct. 8 letter sent to the three school communities.

“A move of this magnitude would be contingent upon the value of the property and the success of Judge Memorial’s capital campaign,” he wrote.

If the diocese proceeds with the plan, the kindergarten through fifth grade student bodies of Our Lady of Lourdes and Kearns-St. Ann’s elementary schools would be merged and housed in the historic Kearns -St. Ann’s building. Grades six through eight would become part of Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, which would have its own floor in a new building that would be constructed for the high school.

The move would only be possible if the diocese is able to sell the 7.7-acre Judge/Our Lady of Lourdes site for a price sufficient to cover the construction of a new building on the land near Kearns-St. Ann Catholic School.

In an interview with the Intermountain Catholic, Longe stressed that the diocese is at this point just exploring the possibility of the move to the St. Ann campus. “We really don’t know how much money we can get for the land,” he said. “The bishop has authorized the property to go up for sale so that we can see if we can get a buyer that will help us get close to our target. This whole project hinges on the fact that we can sell the land for an adequate price.”

While Judge Memorial CHS Principal Patrick Lambert expects that enrollment would increase at a new campus, the primary goal of the move is retention of existing students, he said. A 2019 demographic study sponsored by the diocese revealed that the Catholic schools in Utah have a lot of attrition between fifth and sixth grades. The main reason students were leaving was because of programming; parents want more electives, more language opportunities and a wider variety of course work, Lambert said.

“We’re trying to meet that challenge by providing a strengthened middle-school experience,” he said.

The move would also enable the school to expand its STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), computer coding and industrial arts programs, he said, adding that combining the schools on one campus would allow resources to be pooled, more specialized teachers and advanced course offerings.

The goal for the move would be to offer a better learning experience for all students, Lambert said.

The St. Ann campus is easily accessible by public transit, another advantage Lambert cites as being highly significant. The new campus would also be energy efficient, while Judge’s buildings have problems associated with aging: construction dates range from 1936 to 1989. 

“At times it has been a pipe dream to be able to get into a place where our energy goals are significantly different,” Lambert said. “What we’re seeing now is that it’s time to modernize. There’s more of a sense of urgency in that I don’t want to push this off so that somebody 20 years down the line needs to deal with our current facility challenges. Having a plan to move forward enables us to have a school that’s open and healthy for the next 100 years.”

If the financial side of the equation can be made to work, this move would enable the diocese to provide a full kindergarten to 12th grade campus on the north side of the Salt Lake Valley similar to the Skaggs Catholic Center in Draper, Longe said. “It will allow us to have two really strong education centers in the valley for the future going forward.”

Relocating the Judge Memorial campus is not a new idea. The possibility of moving to the St. Ann’s property was first broached in 1958, Lambert said. JMCHS was unsuccessful in 1988 with an attempt to buy South High School, when it closed and again in 1995, with a bid for the historic Jordan High School, which was closing. In the early 2000s they also looked at a property that is now the Granite School District campus in South Salt Lake.

Although all of these efforts proved unfruitful, “each time that has come up it has really revolved around Judge Memorial being on four and a half acres; most high schools are on 20 acres,” Lambert said.

The difference this time is there is strong interest from buyers, both local and national, in the Judge property, Lambert said. Also, discussions with the Judge community have yielded verbal commitments for a significant amount of additional funding, he said.  

“Our community support is immense,” he said. “This build is being received extremely positively. We are very optimistic that the Judge Memorial community is rallying around the idea of creating the best learning environment for its future students.”

The diocese has already listed the property for sale and the school’s capital campaign is slated to continue over the next two years. If the funds are raised, the new buildings could be completed in three to four years, Lambert said.

If the move turns out not to be financially feasible, the school community will regroup and look at other options, Longe said.

“We would want to continue the idea of the consolidation of a K-12 model and if we had to do it on site then we would do a strategic planning process to do that,” he said. “We couldn’t afford probably to do it on the scale that we’re doing now.

“We just want to stay on the cutting edge,” he added. “Judge is a four-time Blue Ribbon School. We want to be able to continue to maintain those programs and to provide the very best education for years to come for our students.”