Last year, St. John the Baptist Catholic Academy in Johnsburg had only 65 students.

“It got pretty low,” Principal Ashley Gaura said. There were four students in the private parochial school’s kindergarten, and 20 in the middle school grades.

A year later, the school’s enrollment is at 87. Gaura and others, including Superintendent Kim White of the Rockford Diocese, believe that number can continue to grow, even as six schools in the Chicago Archdiocese are slated to close at the end of the current school year.

The difference, school officials said, is St. John’s decision to switch to a classical education model beginning this school year.

A classical curriculum is literature-based, White explained, and uses “Socratic dialogue and cross-curricular integration in religion, language arts, history and humanities, taught together.”

Art, she said, “inspires classical literature study.”

Reading and literature is used across disciplines to teach all areas of study, Gaura said. Rather than a day broken into social studies or math or English classes, reading and memorization are used to inspire and challenge students.

It is also part of a larger effort in the 34 Rockford Diocesan schools not only to attract new families, but to reorganize using an “academy” model while helping students better understand and embrace their faith.

“We were looking for a more creative approach” to the issue of falling enrollment, White said. That includes expanding curriculums and “what we are offering to Catholic school communities.”

Instead of every school across the diocese offering the same education, an academy setup can offer a classic curriculum at one school, STEM-based classes at another, dual-language programs at another, or even a performing arts high school.

The specialized tracts “expand to a wider audience” the attraction of a parochial education, she said.

Gaura was becoming familiar with the classic model when she came to St. John’s at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, as she was learning about it while homeschooling her own children.

As the school’s education commission discussed how to increase enrollment, classical education came up as an option, she said. “It would separate us from area Catholic and public schools.”

With diocesan approval, St. John’s started using the new model this year in its fifth through eighth grade. Those were the first grades to begin using the classic program as they had the lowest enrollment, she said, adding the school believed it may lose families initially.

That didn’t happen.

“People want it in this area ... they are coming from towns away” to have it for their children, she said.

Katie Schweinsberg is one of those parents. Four of her five children, who previously attended another Catholic school, are enrolled at St. John’s this school year.

“We felt it would give a good environment and culture for the kids” and not just be about trying to increase enrollment, Schweinsberg said.

Not only has her fifth-grade son’s faith strengthened, but he went from reading children’s fiction to classic literature.

“On his own, at the book fair, he bought ‘Moby Dick,’” Schweinsberg said, adding he’s also reading “Swiss Family Robinson,” “The Lord of the Rings” and “Treasure Island.”

“It is striking to me, that he is reading such rich books. It is good for his mind and development,” she said.

Her sister-in-law, Danielle Phelan, has three students at St. John’s. She had been homeschooling and using a classic program, making it an easier transition.

Now her son is reading the poetic “Epic of Gilgamesh” while becoming more educated in their faith, Phelan said.

It is important to White, she said, that the push towards academies in the Rockford diocese schools are not just pulling students out of other Catholic schools.

That is not what is happening, Gaura said.

“We didn’t pull from other Catholic school. We pulled from public and home schooling,” she said. “It is genuine and organic growth.”