All Saints’ Episcopal School Rector and Head of Students William Martin announced Monday the 95-year-old school will close in May without an infusion of funding. Above is the main building, Green Hall, seen from Confederate Avenue. (Melanie Duncan ThortisThe Vicksburg Post)

All Saints’ Episcopal School officials announced Monday to students that expenses are increasing faster than enrollment, meaning the nearly 100-year-old institution may close in May.

The news hit hard. “I live with a child who is glowing from her experience at All Saints’,” Carolyne Howard said about her 17-year-old daughter, Frannie, who is a junior. “I don’t want to lose this school, it’s too special.”

The school, founded in 1908 as an Episcopal girls’ school, is now a boarding and day school for young men and women in the seventh to 12th grades. It offers a full college preparatory curriculum.

Howard said she and her daughter, who are from New Orleans, lease a home in Vicksburg so Frannie can attend the school.

“This is the finest thing, academically, that has ever happened to my child,” she said. “I believe in what the school has done for Frannie.”

The Rev. William Martin, rector and head of the school, said today the school will suspend classes in May.

“We feel it is imperative as good stewards of this school to suspend operations and to revisit our mission,” he said.

Martin said enrollment has declined over the past 17 years until surging in the last two years.

About 80 students are enrolled in the school including 21 day students from the Vicksburg area. In 1983 the school had 176 boarding students and 12 day students.

“The reality the board of trustees and I have to face is that those numbers are not high enough to pay the bills,” he said.

Tuition for the school is $5,000 a year for day students and $18,300 a year for boarding school students.

Ann Gerache completed the 11th and 12th grades at All Saints’ when only women attended the school.

“Truthfully, I am stunned and I am grieving,” she said. “I guess I just thought it would be there forever.”

“The quality of education offered there is unsurpassed,” Gerache said.

Jennifer Shelnutt, 17, a senior from Little Rock, Ark., came to the school as a junior and said the school has changed her life.

“My grades have gone up and my attitude on life has changed,” she said. “I’m a better person spiritually and pretty much all around.”

Shelnutt said she and classmates were talking this morning in their botany class about trying to help the school.

“We’re thinking about writing one sentence about how the school has made us happy and sending it to all the dioceses in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi,” she said. The school gets some financial support from Episcopal churches, alumni and other donors.

Debra Batton, director of external relations, said student response to the announcement was awesome.

“These students are not going to lay down and roll over,” Batton said. “They’re going to go down fighting.”

Howard said she hopes people will rally for the school.

“We’re people of hope and this school is based on hope,” Martin said. “This is a matter of hope versus financial reality.”

Howard said if the school does close, it will be a loss for the city of Vicksburg and the state of Mississippi.

“It will be a loss of an academic gem,” she said.