"We have continued to work furiously up to this very moment to secure the necessary financing that would allow us to continue the educational ministry of All Saints'," Gray wrote. "Though we are not yet sure of the future of All Saints', it is my burden and responsibility, as chairman of the board, to announce to you that All Saints' School will not be receiving students for the 2006-2007 academic year."

Gray stopped short of writing an epitaph for the school. "The board of trustees will be meeting in the very near future to review the options available to us and plan for the future of this special school in this very special place," he wrote.

Specifically, it was word on a loan application from a Texas financial institution that led to the announcement.

Trustees had All Saints' appraised as an independent school. That appraisal was satisfactory but "our optimism about the future (enrollment projections) was not the primary focus" of the review," Martin said.

The news hit especially hard due to an aggressive, Vicksburg-centered campaign to fund the school following an announcement of pending closure by trustees three years ago.

Martin said Vicksburg had been "outstanding in its support of our efforts, and that's largely been a result of the incredible work and dedication of our local alumna and trustee Bobbie Marascalco."

Marascalco and others have volunteered hundreds of hours to try to contact long-time alumni and business leaders, Martin said.

In addition to raising money, school supporters recruited. All Saints' served 124 students this year, up from 80 at the beginning of 2003. About 50 of those are day students and of the about 74 boarders about one-fifth are from other countries.

All Saints' graduation was Saturday and a student who received her diploma that day exemplifies the school's role, Marascalco said.

"She got a $140,000 scholarship to Tulane," Marascalco said. "She was dropped off six years ago with no sheets, no nothing. It's like her home is All Saints'. And she's not the only one.

"It's been a refuge and it's been a place they can count on. And that's just sad to think that these kids who need it won't be able to come back there."

Among the fundraising efforts begun this year is an Internet raffle in which people can buy $25 chances for $25,000, to be drawn for in November. That raffle will continue and the prize will still be given away, Marascalco said. Proceeds will go toward restarting All Saints' or, failing that, toward paying down existing school debt, Marascalco said.

An annual silent auction around Thanksgiving led by Marascalco and family members with ties to All Saints' has also raised thousands of dollars a year for the school.

The school's enrollment doubled over the past five years and "was going to get better all the time," Martin said. Dormitory and classroom capacity existed for the school to increase its boarding enrollment by about 20 percent without reducing its student-teacher ratio of 8:1, or significantly increasing expenses, Martin said.

Financial difficulties were revealed in January 2003, when trustees announced All Saints' would close that May.

A rally followed. In December 2003 Martin said the school could remain open indefinitely.

Nearly two years later, though, the possibility of closure arose again with a November letter to faculty, staff, students and parents that the school could close because of its finances.

Alumni and supporters of the school have worked since then toward raising the $1.6 million the board said it needed to continue operating through this month, $2.1 million for the next two years and $3.6 million to remain open indefinitely.

Martin said the school had raised a record annual fund amount of $350,000, but that that amount was well below what was needed.

The loan option looked promising until practically the end of the school year, Marascalco said. When graduation arrived without its having been obtained, however, the school had little choice but to make the decision it made, Marascalco said.

Martin said he met Monday with the school's 14 faculty members and four recreation specialists. At the end of the year the school employed about 50 people, said dean of students and director of physical education and recreation Greg Head, who had just completed his 25th year at the school.

About 10 of the school's teachers have taught there for at least 20 years, Head said.

"We didn't have a big turnover," Head said. "You bought into the ministry here and people stayed. It's just a great place to be."

School staff members also typically had long tenures, said director of dormitory life Neal Nations, a 27 1/2-year employee. Two of the school's food-service employees, for example, had been there 40 years, Nations said.

"And those people are just as much ministers to the kids as we are," Nations said.

The school's first and still main building, William Mercer Green Hall, contains all its classrooms and its front porch was the first and last place visited by generations of students, school board member and physical education program founder Charlene Eichelberger said on the porch Monday. She and three other teachers were in rocking chairs, remembering students the school had helped - and, she said, not wanting to leave.

Eichelberger said the school's entire program is geared toward finding a student's strengths.

"It's not for everybody," Eichelberger said of the school. "But it is for a lot of people."

Martin said the school would continue to employ a skeleton staff and that conferences and camps scheduled for the summer there would continue as scheduled. He said the school's board would likely form a working group to continue to explore options for the future.

"I haven't given up," Marascalco said. "The heart and soul of the school is worth saving."

END