Holy Trinity students to start year in Rochester

LACONIA — Holy Trinity School will begin its school year on Tuesday, but for the first time in its 50-year history, students won’t have their first day of the year in Laconia. The private Catholic school, overseen by the Diocese of Manchester, will begin its 2024-25 school year within the walls of Seton Academy in Rochester.

The reason for the geographic change is due to staffing problems that took both administration and teachers by surprise. The pre-K through 8 school requires five teachers in order to operate, and after two candidates who were expected to join the staff this year withdrew, the school was left with just three teachers.

Dave Thibault, superintendent of schools for the diocese, said the situation presented an uncomfortable truth, and not a lot of time to deal with it.

“Up until last week, we had some candidates we though we were about to bring in,” Thibault said. “We were just not going to be able to deliver what we wanted to. We met this week and we had three options in front of us. Of the three, the one we felt would be the most successful was if we partnered with Seton to deliver academic instruction for this academic year.”

Seton Academy is a one of the newer of the 26 schools administered by the diocese and, Thibault said, it is one already utilizing the Classical style of education that is becoming the new standard for diocesan schools.

The plan for this year, as presented to parents during a meeting held earlier this week, is for students to gather at Holy Trinity School, which since 2019 has been on the Sacred Heart campus. From there, students and teachers will travel by bus to Rochester for the school day, then will get back on the bus to Laconia, where the Holy Trinity building will be open for after school care.

Mike Pelletier, head of school for Seton Academy, will serve as interim principal for Holy Trinity.

Thibault said the relocation of Laconia students to Rochester is purely temporary. The arrangement is in place for the entirety of the school year, but it won’t be continued any longer than necessary. The diocese is continuing to search for teachers and a new school principal, with a goal of returning Holy Trinity to Sacred Heart.

“By next year we will definitely be back at Holy Trinity, but if we can do it sooner we will,” Thibault said.

The change of location is the latest in a series of disruptions for Holy Trinity, founded in 1971. The prior head of school, Vincent “Butch” Schuck, left over the summer. There were also departures of other school staff. Coinciding with these personnel changes was a drop in enrollment. Holy Trinity, which had an enrollment as high as 215 in 1999, has been fluctuating between 65 and around 80 since the COVID pandemic, according to Alison Mueller, a spokesperson for the Diocesan Catholic Schools Office. Last year, local enrollment was as high as 82 and had fallen to 69 by the end of the year. About 40 were expected to start next week, but school officials don’t know how many will continue after hearing the Rochester plan.

Holy Trinity’s enrollment trends have been an outlier among the rest of the state’s Catholic schools, Mueller said, citing year-over-year growth since the COVID pandemic, with a total of 5,680 students enrolled in diocesan schools last school year.

Thibault said he wasn’t able to explain the sudden drop in enrollment for Holy Trinity, except to note frequent personnel changes at the school. “Leadership changes every three years, that’s hard. Attrition has really hurt us,” Thibault said, noting enrollment won’t affect the diocese’s commitment to maintaining a Catholic school in Laconia.

“It’s really important for us, for parents if they want Catholic education, for them to get there within 30 minutes,” Thibault said. "Part of our mission is to make it not just available and affordable, but accessible. ... If we can help the school solve the human resource problem over the next year, I know this school will be back up and growing again.”

“Laconia is a beautiful community, we have tremendous parish support,” Thibault continued. “Father Marc [Drouin] is amazing, there’s a beautiful endowment board that’s supportive, the community loves the school.” As to why the enrollment dropped over the summer, “That’s the question that we need to figure out to rebuild the school."

For parents like Jessica Humphreys of Laconia, Holy Trinity School has become a critical part of her family’s education plan. Her daughter is looking forward to starting her fourth year at the private school next week, she said.

Humphreys said she pulled her daughter from Laconia public schools for a combination of reasons. She said “there were a few things said to my child and myself that I didn’t agree with,” at the public school, and at the same time, “my daughter started asking questions, wanting to learn more about God, and I didn’t know how to answer them.”

Since first enrolling in Holy Trinity, Humphreys said her experience has been “up and down,” with last year being “almost the worst of it. There were a lot of teachers that left, my daughter’s favorite teacher left, there were situations that weren’t handled appropriately,” in which she said parents were “kept out of the loop” by the previous head of school.

Last year stood in contrast to her experience during the first two school years, during which “my daughter got the best education that she ever had ... she had teachers there who pushed her and saw her potential, made sure that she could excel in her classes.”

Since she works in Rochester, Humphreys she feels the temporary plan for this school year will work for her family.

“My daughter’s probably going to get an even better education, she’ll have more kids to talk to, from a social standpoint, this might be even better for her,” Humphreys said. She added she feels comfortable with Pelletier after meeting him this week, and is grateful he is wiling to help the Holy Trinity School tradition continue.

“I shook that man’s hand and thanked him for putting in the effort to make sure that there’s a place for my daughter to be,” Humphreys said. “I’ll be damned if my daughter has to go back to public school.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the name of the diocese which oversees the school, the Diocese of Manchester.