DETROIT — St. Clement School in Centerline and St. Alfred School in Taylor will not be open for the 2011-2012 school year. News was broken to both school communities in March.

The reason for the closures, in both cases, were downward trends in enrollment, which in turn would have created too great of a financial burden for the respective parishes to subsidize.

School parents at St. Clement were made aware of the closure through a mail on March 11.

The enrollment at St. Clement — one of the archdiocese’s oldest schools, which was opened in 1857 — had dipped below 90 students for the current school year.

At St. Alfred Parish, a townhall-style meeting was called on March 31 during which parents were told that the grade school needed to be closed. St. Alfred ‘s enrollment had fallen from 191 students in Kindergarten through eighth-grade in the 2007-08 school year, to just 126 students in the current school year.

Following the closures, and the opening of Austin Catholic Academy in Macomb next year, the archdiocese will have 69 grade schools and 26 high schools.