Aug. 20 was back-to-school night at St. Patrick’s Academy High School in Great Falls. Parents arrived with their kids, who were assigned their lockers, some even stowing away a few personal items for the start of school. The annual event is a tradition that welcomes the Catholic school community to a new school year. It was a Thursday, and school was to start the following Wednesday. Despite many changes at the high school over the past year, the mood was cautious but positive, parents told Montana Free Press. Students expected to get their class schedules. The festivities shifted, though, when Bishop Jeff Fleming, who leads the Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, addressed the crowd. “And I’ve got to say this was weird, because he always starts every meeting I’ve had with him with prayer,” Aaron Thomasson, whose son was going to be a sophomore at St. Patrick’s, told MTFP recently. “But this one didn’t.” Fleming announced that the high school would be closed for the year. Thomasson told MTFP that the immediate explanation was that an on-site school administrator had suddenly quit.  School was supposed to start in less than a week. Parents in the crowd sought solutions. Some stood and volunteered to fill roles at the school — anything to keep the school year on track. They asked what qualifications were necessary and what parents might have applicable experience. Then the bishop and a few other top church administrators hurried out for a private meeting in an adjoining chapel. “They came out after about 20 minutes and said they were going to make a final decision Monday,” Thomasson said. “And that was when it got heated. Because obviously that gives, at best, for all the parents in Great Falls, two days to get into the local school system.” After parents voiced concerns about waiting for a final decision, church leaders agreed to make an announcement the next day. That Friday, in a letter to the Great Falls’ Catholic community, the bishop confirmed that the high school would not open. “I had believed that the school would open this year,” Fleming wrote in the letter, “but the realities that we are facing in the final stages of preparation left us with no workable path forward for the start of the school year.” Behind the scenes, the path had looked difficult for months. Over the past year, enrollment plummeted as dozens of parents pulled their kids from the three Catholic schools in Great Falls, frustrated by the rollout of several major changes implemented by church leadership. In April, the Catholic diocese, which oversees church operations for nearly all of eastern Montana, announced the closure of a Great Falls K-8 school after enrollment drops contributed to an unsustainable financial outlook. At St. Patrick’s Academy High, 70 students were enrolled for the fall 2025 semester. By August 2026, only 18 were expected to return. On top of that, more than half of the high school’s 11 faculty members announced their resignations in May 2026. More staff and faculty left at the end of the school year. The principal and the administrative dean both resigned. The Catholic diocese spearheaded a rebrand of its Great Falls schools in 2025, but the transition was uneven. At the high school, a sign near the street showed the new name, but the sign on the building still said “Central Catholic High School,” the old name. Credit: Matt Hudson In interviews with more than a dozen former faculty, staff and parents of the Great Falls Catholic school system, stakeholders described longstanding frustration about operations and a lack of communication from the diocese about sudden changes, including a major “rebrand” of three well-known Catholic schools under the St. Patrick’s name. Some described shifting and overbearing policy changes — micromanagement by church administrators that disrupted the educational atmosphere that, by all accounts, had been a small but close and loving Catholic school community. “I will say that when the school closed and then the other school closed, it really felt like the diocese didn’t have our kids’ hearts,” said Kathi Odenbriet, whose son had been a junior-high student at St. Patrick’s Academy East, which closed last spring. “The teachers, they’ve been great. But the way it went down, it didn’t feel like the diocese cared about the children. And that was hard to take.” Aubrey Hiller-Rearden, the chief operating officer of the Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, acknowledged in an interview last week that stakeholders in the school felt unheard and were frustrated with the changes that took place. But she was firm that the “vision” the diocese has for the schools is the right path — and one that the church continues to pursue. “I think the faculty, staff, students, families and alumni felt that they were left out of the process of how a vision of a K-12 system was going to be executed,” Hiller-Rearden said. “And I think it led to feelings of uncertainty and frustration, and I think they felt like there was the lack of input from them. And I think parents, at that point, started to explore other opportunities for their children. But it’s important to note that the conversation about a K-12 system in Great Falls has been an ongoing conversation for 50 years.” SUDDEN CHANGE For decades, there were three established Catholic schools in Great Falls before they were consolidated as St. Patrick’s Academy. Two schools, Our Lady of Lourdes and Holy Spirit, both served students in grades K-8. Great Falls Central High School opened in 2000 after the previous Catholic high school closed in 1973. While Lourdes and Holy Spirit were run by individual Catholic parishes, the high school had direct oversight from the diocese. In the church hierarchy, a Catholic diocese manages multiple parishes. Parents and teachers described a devout community. At the high school, some students thrived in the smaller class environment and participated in a range of sports and extracurricular activities. Parents often donated their time and money to maintain those activities in a small school system. Several parents who spoke with MTFP emphasized that their Catholic faith enriched the culture at the schools. But it was also a welcoming environment for as many as half of the high school students who weren’t practicing Catholics. Cristen Cochran and her family aren’t Catholic, but her daughter transferred to Central Catholic High School as a freshman three years ago after a poor experience at Great Falls High. Cochran said her daughter made incredible improvements. Bishop Jeffrey Fleming, pictured here in 2024, assumed leadership of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings in 2022. Credit: Matt Hudson “The teachers cared,” Cochran told MTFP. “She was a handful her freshman year there. Sophomore year, she just plugged in, and the love the staff had for the kids was amazing. They cared for her, not as a student, but as a person.” But big changes came in the summer of 2025. The three schools united under a rebranding effort led by the diocese. The new, unified identity for the three schools was St. Patrick’s Academy, which included St. Patrick’s Academy West (Our Lady of Lourdes), St. Patrick’s Academy East (Holy Spirit) and St. Patrick’s Academy High School (Great Falls Central Catholic High). The schools chose a new mascot, the Wolfhounds. Although past unification attempts had failed, church leaders pitched this latest effort as Bishop Fleming’s vision. Parents, faculty and staff quickly saw gaps in the rollout. “The rebranding, to really do it right, all of the things that need to be repainted, redesigned and all that, it’s going to be expensive,” said Sean Donnelly, the high school principal and dean from 2023 to June 2026. “Almost immediately, when the rebrand was underway, we were told we were under austerity measures and you [could] buy only essential purchases.” The transition was uneven. Fresh floor mats showed up with the new Wolfhounds mascot, but other items remained unchanged. At the high school, for example, the old Great Falls Central High colors and mascot, the Mustangs, remained on the gym floor. The sign on the building still bears the name Central Catholic High School, while a newer sign near the street reads “St. Patrick’s Academy High School.” Parents said the rebrand was sudden and heavy-handed. Multiple people described efforts to remove references to the old Central Mustangs that led to frustration, particularly among students and alumni. “There were a couple times when my youngest said, ‘I can’t do that. We can’t wear that anymore,'” said Brooke Corry, who had two kids in the Catholic schools. “It can’t have Central on it.” There were other big changes. Mass services, which were previously once weekly, became required for every school day. The schools also switched to a four-day week with Friday as an additional, optional day for “enrichment experiences” like field trips. It was met with mixed reviews, but some parents told MTFP it felt like a 20% reduction in their kids’ weekly education for the same tuition. Emily Drazich, who had three kids in the Catholic schools, said the four-day school week pushed her family to enroll them elsewhere. Former faculty, staff and parents of St. Patrick’s Academy High School said that the Catholic diocese could be heavy-handed in removing mentions of the school’s previous name and mascot, the Mustangs. Credit: Matt Hudson For Drazich and others who spoke with MTFP, it was a case in which multiple frustrations snowballed. She also felt that, despite the increase in Mass services, the Catholic identity underpinning the school system was eroding amid all the upheaval. “It was supposed to be about the actual foundation of our faith and forming our children in that environment every single day,” Drazich said in written comments to MTFP. “We felt like, at times, there was more emphasis on the image of Catholic education than the actual foundation underneath it.” Hiller-Rearden told MTFP that the Catholic faith teaches one to look forward rather than dwell on the past. While she said some parts of the transition could have been handled differently, she repeated that the diocese was carrying out a plan half a century in the making. “Building on 50 years of dialogue, listening sessions, two previous bishops, feasibility studies, all of that,” she said. “I think we could have done it differently. I’m not sure we would have ended up in a different spot at this point.” Within a year and a half of the rebranding meant to unify three schools, two of them closed. THE CLOSURE OF ST. PATRICK’S EAST Through the 2025-2026 school year, enrollment steadily fell as frustrated parents pulled their kids out of the new St. Patrick’s Academy. It was a huge blow to a private school system that relied heavily on tuition. In April 2026, there was another sudden announcement: St. Patrick’s East, formerly Holy Spirit, would close at the end of the school year. Leaders connected the decision to a turning point in the school’s enrollment trajectory. “It was financial, according to our councils,” Laura O’Neill, the former principal at St. Patrick’s East, told MTFP in an April interview. “We were operating in the black until this rebranding came about. We lost 67 students.” The news was presented as a decision not of the diocese but of the parish and its priest, who had direct administrative control over the school. Responding to swarms of angry Facebook comments, the diocese commented April 24 that “the parishes and the diocese remain responsible for their own schools under canon law both financially and administratively.” But it was the diocese that instituted the rebranding effort and the four-day school week, parents and faculty told MTFP. People involved with the school repeatedly referred to the diocese’s influence and the impact of that influence on enrollment, even at the parochial schools. “They changed everything,” O’Neill said in April. “They changed the name. They changed the logo. They changed the colors.” Online commenters speculated that the diocese was still in a position to assist the school rather than let it close.  Asked what influence the diocese had over the closure of St. Patrick’s East, Hiller-Rearden told MTFP that the ultimate decision was with the leadership at Holy Spirit Parish. “To answer the question of what impact did the diocese, or influence, did the diocese have — Bishop Jeff confirmed the decision of the pastor to close the school,” she said. “That’s it.” The Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings oversees 47 parishes, 14 schools and church operations across much of eastern Montana. Its Great Falls headquarters, called a chancery, sits in a downtown office building. Credit: Matt Hudson / MTFP Odenbriet, whose son was a junior high student at St. Patrick’s East, said that the news hit hard. But she recalled how much the school staff maintained a positive environment for students. “The teachers found out not very long before the families found out,” Odenbriet said. “And there was school the next day. And those teachers all committed to making sure no matter what was going on with their jobs, at the diocese, whatever, that the kids were taken care of.” The students at St. Patrick’s East had the option to transfer to the remaining Catholic K-8 school, St. Patrick’s West. Odenbriet instead enrolled her son at a local public junior high school. “Getting the news, processing it, and then having to make decisions. That was hard for us at that spot,” she told MTFP. “And then when it happened at the high school, and they had two days to figure it out, my heart broke all over again.” TROUBLE AT ST. PATRICK’S HIGH SCHOOL The rebranding, the four-day school week and other policy changes were taking a toll at the high school as well. The small school made enrollment gains in prior years and had 70 students, according to the Montana High School Association. But parents started enrolling their kids elsewhere. At the same time, the diocese continued to exercise stricter control over the school. “Throughout the fall, it seemed like every couple weeks, every couple months, there would be a new policy, some rule or process that would have to be filled and come down from the diocesan level,” said Donnelly, the high school principal and later its dean. Donnelly was a longtime public school teacher and has a doctorate in educational leadership. He started as principal at Central Catholic High in 2023. During that fall of 2025, he said that diocesan administrators approached him and said they wanted to bring on a new principal. Donnelly, meanwhile, was asked to sign a new contract to become administrative dean, a new position at the school. In January 2026, the diocese announced Brian Held as the new high school principal. The reason given publicly for Donnelly’s reassignment was to “make fuller use of his gifts.” Suddenly, the high school was supporting two administrative salaries. “They pretty much split the duties in half,” Donnelly said. “So when Brian was principal, he was doing about 50% of what I was doing as principal. And I was doing the other roughly 50%, just as the title of ‘dean.’” Hiller-Rearden declined to discuss school leadership changes, saying those are private personnel matters. Sean Donnelly became principal of Great Falls Central Catholic High School in 2023. He worked through a rebrand that contributed to dozens of students leaving the Catholic school system. Credit: Matt Hudson Held had served as interim principal at the high school before Donnelly’s hiring and was well-liked by parents and faculty. But the abrupt change alarmed parents, who were already sensitive from the rebranding and witnessing several families in the tight-knit community leave the school. Frustration among students took root as well. “When Sean was pushed aside and Brian [was] brought in with no communication, they just informed the parents of it. We came back in January to a very different campus,” said Nellie Sholey, who was a part-time assistant to the school counselor through most of the 2025-2026 year. Donnelly said that throughout the spring, more and more students announced they were leaving. Enrollment dropped to 56. “Out of those 56 that we still had, of course, seven who were seniors,” Donnelly said. “But then also we had, by probably May, about 20 to 30 of the students who could have come back who said, ‘No, I’m not going to come back.'” Simultaneously, school staff and faculty had been concerned by the change in school administration and faced frustrations of their own. They described a consistent drumbeat of mismanagement, including shifting pay periods, an inability to fund school programs and being stuck in the middle of frustrated parents and demanding church administrators. Much of the frustration was directed at Hiller-Rearden, who was described as a close confidant to the bishop and someone who carried out much of the administrative direction, and Kody Diekhans, who was a “unification agent” during the rebranding and is now principal at the remaining Catholic school, St. Patrick’s Academy West. Kris Warren, who was a science teacher and coach at the high school from 2012 to June 2026, said the diocese restricted access to funds previously available to run long-running club events, such as a Christmas meal donation program that benefits community members in need. Warren said she could see student morale dropping. She reached a breaking point. “I just finally got to the point where it was my health or my job,” Warren told MTFP. “Something’s got to give. So I chose my health.” Warren submitted her resignation in May. She wasn’t alone. That month, when teachers received their contract options for the next school year, more than half of the small faculty — six out of 11 — decided to leave. In addition, the school librarian resigned, as did the school counselor and Sholey, the assistant counselor. And the school’s two administrators, Dean Donnelly and Principal Held, resigned in June at the end of the school year. Reached in September, Held declined an interview request from MTFP. Donnelly, who had kids in the Catholic schools and stuck it out through the job reassignment, said he came to a difficult realization in June when his wife told him he seemed miserable in the job he had loved.  “As an educator, my professional judgment is that trying to run the school in the way that they’re proposing here just wasn’t going to work,” Donnelly said. “It won’t succeed. And it felt like, for me, committing educational malpractice to try and go through the motions and collect a paycheck for something I just didn’t believe could work.” Like other parents, Donnelly enrolled his kids in a small public school district outside of Great Falls. Amber Pichler started in a marketing position with the school in 2023 but became the administrative assistant at the high school last year. The role was like an office manager, handling the many logistical tasks necessary to run a school. Pichler was also frustrated and submitted her resignation in March 2026. But she also had kids attending the Catholic schools and agreed to stay on through the summer to help keep the high school afloat. Like others, Pichler went into the summer of 2026 expecting that the high school would resume in the fall, if perhaps in a diminished form. She had worked through two previous summers at Central High School and knew the work that needed to be done.  But this summer was different. “Throughout that time, I would constantly ask, ‘OK, do you want me to start tuition letters? Do you want me to start setting up for the school year? Do you want me to start ordering supplies like I would normally be ordering?'” Pichler said. The response from the diocese was, “Nope, nope, nope. Just hold off,” she said. ‘IT FELT LIKE THEY DIDN’T REALLY CARE’ In the spring of 2026, Bishop Fleming held one-on-one meetings with high school faculty amid a rush of resignations. Faculty told MTFP that Fleming listened to their concerns and affirmed a commitment to open in the fall. Parents and faculty said it wasn’t entirely fair for Fleming to act surprised in August. “And the fact that he didn’t know two days before school started that nothing’s going on — as an administrator, what’s he doing?” said Warren, the longtime teacher who resigned in the spring. “He knows his staff is gone. What’s he been doing all summer?” While working in the high school office over the summer, Pichler said she fielded calls from job applicants who couldn’t reach the diocese to schedule interviews. Her last day working for the school was Aug. 13. Hiller-Rearden said that the diocese received several applications through the spring and summer and conducted four job interviews. “We beat the bushes and had a lot of conversations and worked really, really hard to make sure that we had at least the minimum to be able to operate the school and open in the fall,” she said. Kody Diekhans, left, was named as a “unification agent” in a rebrand of Great Falls Catholic schools. He is principal of the one remaining school after two closed in 2026. Credit: Matt Hudson The most important piece was a licensed school administrator. Hiller-Rearden said that Diekhans, principal at the remaining K-8 Catholic school, was named interim principal at the high school for the 2026-2027 year. She said that on Aug. 20, Diekhans decided he couldn’t manage both the high school and his K-8 school and withdrew from the high school obligation. In addition, Hiller-Rearden said the high school hired an “on-site manager” who also backed out of the job on Aug. 19. She declined to name that person. Even as students were invited to back-to-school night on Aug. 20 to receive their locker assignments, Hiller-Rearden said Bishop Fleming held out hope that some new development would allow the school to stay open. “I do believe, even up until Friday [Aug. 21] afternoon, we were hopeful that we were going to be able to open the high school,” Hiller-Rearden said. “And it became very apparent that we didn’t have what we needed in place to be able to do that responsibly.” Through all of the turmoil, many families remained committed to the Catholic system. Because they believed the schools had been the best place for their children, many held out hope that their continued support would keep the institutions going. Tom Cook, a parent who pulled two kids from the high school just weeks before the start of the school year, said his family had been dedicated to the success of the Catholic school system. Three of his other children had already graduated from Great Falls Central Catholic High. He told MTFP that the Catholic model and the small-school atmosphere were important to his family. While Cook said there wasn’t much communication from the diocese over the summer, the message they did receive was a message of commitment — including from the bishop himself. “We were entirely expecting the school to be open,” he said. “We were promised that was their plan. They said no matter what, they were going to keep the school open.” With two of the three schools not operating this year, some parents wonder what the continued financial fallout will be for the small Catholic school system that’s so dependent on donor support from alumni and community members.  “I just really feel for everyone who has been affected by that loss of something that was a really special place and headed in the right direction,” said Donnelly, the former principal and dean. “And to have it just kind of taken away, and affected by these things that came from outside and had such a terrible impact on it, that was just really hard.” While the diocese hasn’t announced plans for the high school’s future, representatives have emphasized that the decision to close is, for now, limited to the 2026-2027 school year. Hiller-Rearden said the diocese hired a director for Catholic education who will spearhead plans to reopen at some point. “I know that we have the best interest of the school and our community at the forefront, and the vision hasn’t changed, even with all of this disruption,” Hiller-Rearden said. “The vision is one K-12 system campus for Catholic education in Great Falls.” Across multiple interviews, parents raised a common theme: Their voices weren’t being heard by church leadership. Changes came on abruptly, the reasons weren’t clearly communicated, and those decisions set in motion a series of events that compelled families to change schools and disrupt the social ties that existed there. Even the high school’s Facebook page was deleted. “Honestly, it felt like they didn’t really care that people were leaving,” said Drazich, a parent, in written comments to MTFP. “There wasn’t much effort to keep families. It felt like this is what we’re doing, and that was that. It became very much an ‘either you’re with us or you’re against us’ feeling. That was incredibly painful.” Reporter Zeke Lloyd contributed to this story. The post Two closed schools. Faculty resignations. What happened at Great Falls Catholic schools? appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less