Good Shepherd School will pack up and leave downtown Frankfort early next summer, moving its 187 students and 40 staff to make way for construction of a new judicial center.
But church and school leaders say that vacating the building that has been home since 1922 won’t change their mission.
The church’s Parish Life Center on Leestown Road will house the school until a new one is constructed on the property. The details of the move were released to parishioners last week.
“I think for a while we lived in ambiguity, but now we’re trying to assure people that we’re going to hang together,” said The Rev. Charles Howell, pastor of the church.
“Good Shepherd School will continue, and the parish is going to continue.”
Good Shepherd will vacate its downtown facility by July 5, when it will be relinquished to the Franklin County Fiscal Court and the Administrative Office of the Courts.
A team of parishioners and school representatives has begun planning for the transition, Principal Debra Pack said. Staffers will move furniture and supplies when the school year ends, and they plan to be settled on Leestown Road by August.
The Parish Life Center has six classrooms, a cafeteria and a kitchen that the school can use. It will still be used for fellowship, religious education, weddings and banquets on the weekends, Howell said.
The church plans to purchase four portable buildings, each with two classrooms, for more space. A local gym will be used for sports, Pack said.
Parent and parishioner Chris Cecil said Catholic education has been a part of Frankfort since 1860.
“This isn’t the first transition we have gone through. We have been through an era of transition for 150 years – all of this has been an era of transition.
“The only thing not going with us are these buildings,” he said. “The tradition, our values, our beliefs are going with us.”
In June, the Project Development Board agreed to purchase the church office building, elementary school, playground and a portion of the gymnasium for $1.45 million.
The historic 1850 church building and the 1922 middle school building are not included in the deal.
A nonprofit organization called The Good Shepherd Center has been formed to preserve the worship site and further the church’s civic work.
“Our hopes and our intentions, fully, are to not leave a cavity down there,” he said.
“In other words, maintain the architectural integrity of both sites that are left, and to find dignified purposes for them, whether we continue using them or not.”
Stained glass windows and sacred objects will be protected, Howell said, and a bishop will schedule a decommissioning ceremony for the site.
“We’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds after that,” he said.
“There’s a possibility we can sell them (the buildings) in the future, but at this point I’ll just say we’re hanging onto them.”
Financial records show that church officials decided to move to the edge of town in 1978, Howell said. The church purchased land on Leestown road in the early ’80s, and finished construction of the church in 1997. The Parish Life Center was completed in 2006.
“And now it’s time to move the entire school out there,” he said.
Officials declined to release details about the new school. They have formed a building committee and contracted with an architect for a master site plan.
The Catholic Diocese Building Commission and county planners must approve the plan before designs are presented to the parish, Howell said.
The project’s timeline will depend on how quickly the church can raise money for it, he said.
“A lot will depend on the success of our capital campaign that we will be launching next year,” Howell said.
“That will kind of set the pace for how fast we can start building, because we have several capital needs.”
As an incentive, the school is freezing tuition for families who enroll before Dec. 15.
Parent and PTO president Laura Negron says she hopes the new school will include a large library, science labs and technology.
“I think it’s a goal that many of us have aimed for, for years,” she said.
“The heart and soul of Good Shepherd is not in the location. The heart and soul is in the spirit of the people.”
Pack said the school must adjust to its new location, away from the field trip and community service opportunities that are within walking distance now. They will coordinate transportation with parents, she said.
But there will be benefits too, she said. Science labs and technology can be built in, instead of retrofitted to an historic property.
Students could have outdoor classrooms, a playground with grass instead of concrete, and room to grow.
With more space, the school plans to expand by appealing to out-of-town state workers and parents in neighboring counties. Administrators also hope to grow the school’s 3- and 4-year-old preschool program.
The school is simultaneously preparing for its 150th anniversary next year.
St. Mary’s School was founded in 1860 on Second Street. It later merged with St. Joseph’s School for Boys, and later became Good Shepherd School.
Alumni will be invited to return, and current students will throw the school a birthday party. The community will be able to tour the historic structure, Pack said.
“We want to celebrate that history as we also begin our new era on our new campus.”