Savio Preparatory High School

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Location
St. Dominic Savio Preparatory High School

Information
Type	Catholic
Established	1958
Closed	2007

St. Dominic Savio Preparatory High School was a Catholic educational institution located in the East Boston neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The school shut down in June of 2007.

[edit] Background

Its original incarnation was an all-boys school called Saint Dominic Savio High School, which was founded in 1958 by the Salesians of Don Bosco, an order of the Catholic Church. Savio built a solid reputation as it educated the young men from predominantly Italian-American families in East Boston, Revere, Winthrop, and Chelsea. At its peak, about 440 students were enrolled.

In the early 1990s -- as part of a continual process to cut back on resources due to a decrease in the number of priests and brothers, which made it harder to staff facilities, and an increase in costs, such as the healthcare outlays needed to take care of an ageing population of religious personnel -- the Salesians announced that the school would be closing, a revelation that caused an uproar in the community.

A group of alumni stepped in and eventually the Salesians agreed to cede control of the school to the group, initially with no charge for rental of the property. In September 1993, Savio Preparatory High School opened. Though there was no gap between the Salesians administering the school and the alumni taking over, the period of indecision that preceded the change saw many faculty members and students relocate to other schools. Since then Savio, which became co-ed in the mid-1990s, has been trying to regain the enrollment.

In its last years, Savio faced plummeting enrollment and financial distress, which caused the school's board of directors to vote in early 2007 to close the school at the end of the academic year.^[1]