St. Louis-area Lutheran Schools stayed open during the pandemic. Now they’re thriving

That’s when Muehlfarth’s son started to complain. The education her son, Quinn, received at Mehlville School District just didn’t challenge him, she said. Then the pandemic hit, and his classes were suddenly constrained to the screen of a Chromebook.

“I got to see how bored he was in class,” Muehlfarth said of her son's virtual learning at home.

So the Muehlfarths made the same decision thousands of other families did during the pandemic: They pulled their kids out of public school. And, like many other families in the area, they sent them to a Lutheran school.

Since the fall of 2019, public school enrollment fell by 5,500 students in St. Louis County and nearly 3,000 in St. Louis city amid a nationwide drop in enrollment. Some private schools saw a small bounce, but many, across both the region and country, lost enrollment.

Several culprits have been blamed for the decline. More parents may have opted to homeschool during the pandemic. Younger learners may have never been enrolled in kindergarten, which is optional in Missouri. Overall population decline and falling birth rates in recent years likely played a role, too.

But Lutheran schools in the St. Louis area saw the opposite trend. Since 2019, overall enrollment has increased 19%, according to the Lutheran Elementary School Association, a consortium of 36 Lutheran schools that together make up the second-largest private school system in the area. LESA serves the Lutheran Church-MissouriSynod — one of the most conservative denominations in the Lutheran church, and the second-largest with 1.8 million members nationwide. 

Lutheran education leaders can only speculate why their schools are thriving. The popularity of smaller class sizes may have played a part. Maybe parents were enamored by the tight-knit, faith-based communities Lutheran schools purport to have — communities that notably lack elected school boards consumed by culture wars.

“We always call ourselves the best-kept secret,” said Laura Montgomery, director of education resources for LESA.

But there’s one variable that’s common across the board: Most Lutheran schools stayed completely open during the fall of 2020 while other private or public schools chose to go virtual or hybrid. That’s when enrollment started to climb.

“Many of our schools — not all — were in session full time, and we had families come from public schools who needed their kids in school,” Montgomery said.

One of the four Lutheran high schools in the area, Lutheran High School South in Affton, saw enrollment increase by 41% since the 2018-2019 school year. St. John’s in Arnold, where Muehlfarth's children now attend, saw an 11% boost this past school year alone.

The largest growth for schools serving early childhood through eighth grade was OurSavior Lutheran Church and School in Fenton, where enrollment increased nearly 47%, from 128 students in 2019 to 188 this year. 

The trend reverses a long decline for Lutheran schools that began around the Great Recession and ended with record-low enrollment numbers. 

“It was declining in earlier periods, just like church enrollment,” said AmeeColvin, director of fund development and marketing for LESA.

And for parents like Muehlfarth, the move stuck. They — and their kids — like the Lutheran schools. And they've stayed there even after things largely returned to normal in other schools. 

“It’s been such a big sigh of relief,” Muehlfarth said.

During the summer of 2020, Lutheran High School South administrators made an uncommon decision. They decided to be fully in-person, five days a week — even as several school districts, including Saint Louis Public Schools, Kirkwood, Hazelwood, Mehlville and Affton, opted to stay virtual or hybrid.

Lutheran South’s decision was made largely out of concern for students’ mental health, Principal Jonathan Butterfield said.

“We had an inkling that our students were really struggling coming out of COVID with their social-emotional health,” Butterfield said. “What we found is that they were even worse off than we imagined, but being in person was a game changer.”

To prepare, the school invested in costly, high-quality air filters, and desks were placed 6 feet apart. Even before the pandemic, class schedules were already structured to a college-like model where students weren’t clustered in classrooms all day.

Masks were required per the county health department’s recommendation, which sparked more opposition from “outspoken” parents than the choice to go fully in-person, Butterfield said.

In a staff survey, only one teacher said they'd prefer to hold class virtually, but that teacher ended up teaching in person anyway. And only a handful of students took advantage of the school’s virtual option.

During the 2018-2019 school year, with 391 students, Lutheran South’s enrollment had bottomed to its lowest point since 1960, when the school was just two years old. Now Lutheran South has 552 students. And only six of those use MoScholars — the state’s private school voucher program — because of a “lack of funding” in the program, Butterfield said.

But Lutheran South has seen a “significant increase” in transfer students over the past five years, Butterfield said, which he attributes largely to families who seek a school “that more closely resembles their family’s morals and values.”

“Our core values are in stark contrast to the ways of the world,” Butterfield said. “We are rather countercultural, and that is what many of our families are seeking in a Christian education.”

As enrollment climbed, so did donations, which account for about 10% of the school budget.

“No one wants to give to a sinking ship or a failing ministry,” Butterfield said.

The growth has opened up new possibilities for Lutheran High School South. The school broke ground on a new $18 million center for the arts last May, which was“indirectly possible” because of the school’s growth, Butterfield said. South is also looking to add an $11 million STEM Center.

But Lutheran South won’t experience constant exponential growth — and school officials don’t want it to. The school is 48 students from reaching its preferred capacity of 600 students, Butterfield said.

“You can’t run a model like ours being the size of large public school districts,” Butterfield said.

Lutheran South is the largest of the metro area’s four Lutheran high schools. It’s also the fastest growing. Its North County counterpart, Lutheran North in Normandy, has grown by only 25 students since 2019.

But Metro-East Lutheran High School in Edwardsville has gained 53 students since 2019, for a total of 228 students.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we’ve gone from part-time teachers to adding full-time teachers,” Principal Jay Krause said. “We’re narrowing that student-to-teacher ratio.”

That low student-to-teacher ratio is part of the draw for Lutheran schools.

Muehlfarth, the mother who transferred her son from the Mehlville School District to St. John’s in Arnold, said her son loves school again and his teacher is “phenomenal.”

The teacher has a close relationship with students and knows what they’re interested in because of the smaller class size, Muehlfarth said. With 145 total students, the average class size is 15 students, according to St. John’s website.

“She really honed in on who he was as a person instead of just being a number in a seat,” Muehlfarth said.

Butterfield expects Lutheran South to hit 570 students next year and reach its capacity in about two years.

“That’ll be a tough place to be, too,” Butterfield said. “We would never want to deny a kid who would be a good fit here.”