Ashford is closing its campus?

This is only somewhat related but my old high school (a Catholic school) no longer exists. What happened was that about 7 years ago, the Bishop of Scranton decided to reorganize the schools. So he closed them all. Then he basically started from scratch re-using the existing buildings (but putting new schools in them). This also gave them the opportunity to fire everyone and rehire only those they liked despite the collective bargaining.

This whole process pissed off everyone locally. And people got weirdly possessive of the high schools where their kids, and sometimes they, attended and graduated. It got to the point that one guy printed up money with the bishop's picture on it and urged people to put that in the collection basket instead of real money. Other parents banded together and tried to start their own schools separate from the diocese. My alumni association contacted me more times than I considered sensible to try to rile me up over the issue.

At one point, three schools decided to join together and form one big school and tell the diocese to go suck an egg. The plan fell apart because each school's representative body of angry parents had assumed that the other two schools would come and join them. So, imagine the schools situated in a triangle each about 30 minutes from one another. No one wanted to drive their kids the 30 minutes and everyone wanted to save "their" school.

I get that school closures impact local economies. And I also understand that school closures can evoke emotional responses in the local community. So I empathize with the community in its loss of Ashford.