Photo Caption: St. Jude Catholic School, 10811 N. Knoxville Road in Peoria, is the first new school to be built in the Diocese of Peoria in a decade. It will welcome students on Monday, Aug. 19.

By: By Jennifer Willems

Schools around the Diocese of Peoria will open their doors this week and at St. Jude School in Peoria those doors are brand new.

The school that has taken shape at 10811 N. Knoxville Road since ground was broken last June will welcome students in first through sixth grades on Aug. 19. This makes St. Jude the first totally new Catholic school in the diocese since Central Catholic High School in Bloomington was built and dedicated in 2003.

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC is scheduled to celebrate Mass and bless the 26,000-square-foot facility on Oct. 5. When he visits he will find eight classrooms, including a science lab; administrative offices and a conference room; a kitchen and lunchroom that can double as a stage; and a gymnasium where there will be gym classes and the St. Jude Fire can host basketball games.

The parish’s education wing, which has housed the school since it opened in 2009, is being reconfigured into an early childhood education center with two half-day pre-school classrooms, a full-day pre-school classroom, a kindergarten classroom and a double music room.

All of this is part of a $4.5 million project, “Building God’s Kingdom,” that was launched in February 2011.

A HOST OF FIRSTS
“It has grown quickly. Our classrooms, some of them are full,” according to Winnie Pratt, principal, who said the third grade is the largest with 26 children. “That’s a lot of students, but it’s a good problem in many ways.”
Enrollment is expected to exceed 180 this year, she said. The staff has grown, too.

Among the additions are two members of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist who arrived earlier this month. Sister Maria Christi Nelson, OP, will teach first grade, while Sister Agnes Maria Pineda, OP, will have the homeroom for fifth and sixth grades and teach religion and language arts. (See the related story, page 10.)

With the gym comes the school’s first athletic director, David Rudolph, who will also teach physical education classes. He attended Peoria Notre Dame High School and graduated from Benedictine University in 2011. A cross country team of 12 students can already be seen running through the neighborhoods around the school.

Handling the new full-day pre-school will be Lora Taylor, a St. Jude parishioner with two sons in the school. Pratt said she comes to the post with 17 years of experience and is working on a master’s degree in early childhood education.

“Our half-day pre-schools have always filled up right away so we thought let’s just put it out there that we’re offering a full-day pre-school and see what happens. All three pre-schools were filled by February,” Pratt said. “That’s been a really exciting thing.”

Now that there is a kitchen, St. Jude School can offer a hot lunch program. Overseeing that will be kitchen manager Jennifer Flaherty, who had been a member of the kitchen staff at Peoria Notre Dame.

A WORK OF GOD
While they aren’t part of the bricks and mortar, Google Chromebooks will be another building block in the educational experience at St. Jude this fall. Pratt said every student in fourth, fifth and sixth grade will have one and the second- and third-graders will share them.

“We will not have a computer lab because we don’t believe that just going to a lab is real world,” she told The Catholic Post. “Right now technology is a tool that you use in all kinds of ways. We want our kids to learn that there are certain times when technology is something you need to solve a problem or do a job.”

Pratt will have a management console and will make available the applications and programs that each student needs.

“There might be a student, for instance, who needs an accelerated program in math. That student would have access to something, but they can’t go beyond what we give them,” she explained.

Because everything is Google-based, they will be able to go to any computer and pick up whatever they’ve been working on in class, she added.

Pratt, who has been involved at St. Jude School from its inception, said being able to move into a school building is exciting and a little overwhelming.

“I feel really humbled that I’ve been able to be part of this,” she said. “You go day to day, week to week. . . . It’s kind of awesome to think we’re going to be in this new building, which we were thinking about way back when.”

“We’re tremendously excited,” said Father Patrick Henehan, pastor. “It’s amazing how so many people have been so supportive. It’s been a work of God.”