The firing of Notre Dame High School’s popular principal in April after eight years leading the Riverside Catholic school was the beginning.

Shortly afterward, school President Robert Beatty resigned, protesting the firing and saying he saw no future with the campus’ new leaders.

Directors of admissions and student services quit.

And Coach Robert Robinson — celebrated for 20 successful years coaching Notre Dame basketball, including a 2018 CIF championship — was laid off.

As those key figures left, financial support and enrollment slipped, continuing turmoil and division that hasn’t yet disappeared.

Supporters have rallied behind Principal Matthew Luttringer, who says he was fired for being gay and says he may sue. They accuse the Diocese of San Bernardino — which runs the school — of trying to remake it as a more conservative Catholic institution, at the expense of student diversity, academics and athletics.

Diocese spokesman John Andrews denies all that, saying the diocese suspects fiscal mismanagement and fired Luttringer for poor performance.

What parents, former school employees and diocese officials agree on is that enrollment is declining.

After sticking close to 500 students for each of the past five years — 508 in the 2018-19 school year — officials expect Notre Dame to have 480 students this fall. That’s mostly because fewer incoming ninth graders enrolled, but he doesn’t know why, Andrews said.

Many parents say they know: Families have no confidence in the school after Luttringer’s firing.

Fair or unjust firing?

Andrews said he could not elaborate on the reasons for the firing because state law limits what he can say about a former employee.

Luttringer said his Office of Catholic Schools supervisors never told him of job performance problems until the end of this year. And he said the area they cited — school finances — wasn’t under his direct control.

That left Luttringer with only one conclusion: that he was fired for being gay.

“The lesson we’re sending kids is hypocrisy,” Luttringer said. “The way the superintendent of Catholic schools treated me is completely not in line with Catholic church teachings.”

Superintendent Samuel Torres’ office referred questions to Andrews.

If Notre Dame doesn’t reinstate Luttringer as principal, a lawsuit is ready to be filed, his attorney, Eric P. Lampel said. An online fundraiser on gofundme for Luttringer’s legal fight raised $1,240 from 16 donors as of Friday, July 12.

The law allows religious institutions to fire employees on the basis of sexual orientation only in certain circumstances, which don’t include Luttringer’s — a principal who performs no ministerial functions — according to Lampel.

In June, a Catholic high school in Indianapolis fired a teacher who is in a same-sex marriage, while another Catholic school in the city refused to fire his partner, also a teacher — and lost its status as a Catholic school as a result, CNN reported. Luttringer said he is not married and didn’t discuss his orientation at school, though some on campus were aware of it.

In late March, someone posted a threat of violence against Notre Dame on social media. Luttringer was put on leave immediately after that and fired the first week of April.

According to Luttringer, Torres berated him on campus the morning after the threat, saying he hadn’t demonstrated leadership or sufficiently communicated about the incident with the diocese or parents. Luttringer said he immediately called Riverside police and contacted all Notre Dame families.

Officer Ryan Railsback, a police spokesman and Notre Dame alumnus, said officers made extra patrols the next day.

“This is an example of Notre Dame’s systems working as they’re supposed to,” Railsback said in April.

After the firing, the diocese began a financial audit, Andrews said.

“There is some mismanagement or some problems going on there, but we’re not really going to know what the full picture is until the audit is done,” Andrews said. “It looks like there was some unwise financial decisions made there, particularly over the last year.”

Andrews said he could not elaborate, but said finances were the responsibility of the principal and the president.

Under the principal-president model, used at many Catholic schools and at Notre Dame since 2011, the principal ran the school, while the president headed community relations, fundraising and strategic planning. Instead of a new president, Notre Dame will now have a fundraising position, Andrews said.

Can the school recover?

Beatty said he and Luttringer made important strides, including introducing Apple products, refurbishing locker rooms and improving classrooms. He said he was concerned about the budget, which had “a relatively small deficit in comparison to the size of the budget,” but had plans to eliminate the shortfall.

Now he’s worried about the school, which he said faces challenges after losing top leaders and draws such as Robinson, who led Notre Dame to the CIF Southern Section semifinals the past three years.

Beatty hesitated when asked if he would advise parents to send their child to Notre Dame.

“I don’t think I would ever go as far as saying don’t send your kid there, but I would certainly — I can’t say I support the leadership,” Beatty said, referring to diocese and campus officials. “I’m uncertain what school they would be sending their kid to. There’s so much uncertainty.”

Donors are also taking notice, and in some cases, pulling support.

Andrews said he didn’t have figures on donations, which he said are vital to financial solvency at all diocese schools.

But donors like Cecilia Cuevas, who with her husband has long given $4,500 a year for Notre Dame scholarships, said they’ll send their money elsewhere.

“There are many good Catholic organizations out there,” Cuevas said. “A Catholic school should be Catholic, and the way they treated Matt was not Catholic.”

Robinson, The Press-Enterprise coach of the year in 2018, said school officials told him he was being let go for budgetary reasons, but he doubts that’s the whole story. If financial woes were responsible, he asks, why not offer to let him work at a lower salary?

In Robinson’s eyes, new leaders are overemphasizing the promotion of Catholicism and giving short shrift to other important goals, like athletic competition and a diverse student body.

Torres seemed to view the school as insufficiently Catholic, Robinson said. Beatty agreed, though both stressed that Luttringer emphasized religious values.

Andrews said he wasn’t aware of diocese concerns with the religious atmosphere at Notre Dame, and he said there was no reason for that to conflict with academics or athletics.

“The formation of young people in Catholic faith is a foundational element of any Catholic school, so it’s not a negotiable thing, but it’s woven into the way that academics is taught,” Andrews said. “You don’t have to de-emphasize one and emphasize another.”

Parents said they’ve tried to contact Bishop Gerald Barnes to raise their concerns but haven’t heard back.

Parent Bob Rincon said if his daughter weren’t about to start her senior year, he’d send her to the diocese’s other high school — and Notre Dame’s rival — Aquinas High in San Bernardino.

“That’s saying a lot because she’s been going to Notre Dame, I graduated (from Notre Dame) in ’94, my sister in ’95, and I have two nieces who graduated in the early 2000s,” Rincon said.

Rincon hopes he can reach Barnes to stop the problems he sees from spreading to Aquinas and to undo them at Notre Dame.

Luttringer, who’s working as a flight attendant, said rehiring him would solve many of the school’s issues — but not all of them.

“I think they’ve done so much damage in the community and have bred so much discontent and have caused so much friction, I don’t know if time will heal it,” he said. “I hope it does.”

Local public schools offer fabulous educations, but Notre Dame had something that set it apart, he said.

“What made us a better school is our character,” he said. “One thing you can’t offer at a public school is the sense of community: ‘one heart, one spirit,’ as it says in the Acts of the Apostles. Our families and alumni have been amazing. But students know when we’re not being honest.”