The rumors were already circulating at All Hallows High School in the South Bronx when Mona Agbeko, a junior, opened the dreaded email.

Her mother had picked her up at school that day and they were almost at their home in the Bronx when Mona read aloud the news that hit like a recurring nightmare. Her school was closing down. Again.

Less than a year earlier, Mona and her friend Bridget Mulligan were sophomores at St. Barnabas, a Catholic girls’ school in the Bronx. When the school abruptly informed them that it was closing after 100 years, All Hallows, a boys’ school, broke 115 years of tradition and made room for the girls of St. Barnabas.

But in late January, just as the girls’ second term was about to end, the pitiless ax fell once more. All Hallows, which opened in 1909 with a mission to educate the poor, announced that it will close in June, another inner-city Catholic school fallen victim to financial distress.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mona said. “Again? We’re not even six months into the school year. I’m baffled.”