St. Thomas Aquinas Academy at 150: What does the Future Hold for Catholic Education?

I am a graduate of the oldest parochial high school in Wisconsin but you have likely never heard of it. I grew up fascinated by its history:  the courageous efforts of the School Sisters of Notre Dame who created the school in 1875, admiring the Windsor Players for their renowned theatrics, and applauding the various Cavalier basketball teams for their underdog victories over the state tournament. I am a proud alumna of St. Thomas Aquinas Academy for its 150 years of blazing Catholic education in the Diocese of Green Bay, but I fear without change those may be the only years we celebrate.

St. Thomas Aquinas Academy sits one hour north of Green Bay along the shores of Lake Michigan and is bordered by the Upper Peninsula. Marinette and surrounding towns are predominantly blue collar with the highest employer for the area is manufacturing. With the steady decline of students completing postsecondary education, youth apprenticeships, and career and technical education programs, the work force will continue to drop. The town’s peak population was 16,000 in 1900 but has fallen year over year to just over 11,000. With its genetic makeup and the statistical trends, the population of Marinette and surrounding areas will continue to fall as the labor force ages. With fewer students attending any form of postsecondary education or job training, the need for Catholic education can be deemed unnecessary because long has the argument been that “Catholic education prepares you for college.”

I entered St. Thomas Aquinas Academy elementary school in 2007 with a class of five and I graduated from the same school in 2020 with a class of four students. I can guarantee laughter from anyone when I tell them I was the valedictorian of my high school class and then promptly follow that with “it was a class of four.” Enrollment at St. Thomas once levelled out around sixty students per class but has steadily declined to less than ten students graduating each year. It is concerning that this school which once drew boarding students from Chicago and was bursting at the seams with enrollment has become a school which tries to survive to each year’s end. It seems to me that our community has forgotten what is vital about Catholic education.

In elementary school I was introduced to Jesus in an academic way. My parents practiced the faith, but it was in the classroom that I began learning about the fundamentals of the faith: the Ten Commandments in first grade; the Fruits of the Spirit in second grade; and the early foundations of Church history in fourth and fifth. When my mother converted to Catholicism, I was in second grade and my classmate’s mother was her sponsor. At her Rite of Initiation I remember standing there so proudly because I had just learned about the sacraments and had just received first communion myself–but soon my mother and I would receive it together at Mass. 

In middle school SPIRITUS and Net Ministries came to our classes and made the faith fun and relational. Our teachers prayed with us before classes and guided us to see history through the lens of morality; mathematics and science through the workings of Catholics like Roger Bacon and Anyos Jedlik, the father of the Electric Motor; and in English the ways that our human experiences shape the words we write and create just as God shaped and created the world.

My Catholic education at St. Thomas was more than academics. In the fall, we would carry out tables to set up for the back to school picnic and Oktoberfest. December meant baking cookies for the Tour of Homes fundraiser. In February we would get out of class early to help with the Athletic Club’s pizza making fundraiser. In March, right before our school auction, our gym classes would help to set up the gym for the Sunday event. We were constantly hosting fundraisers to bridge the financial gap. 

My family and several others were the life-blood of that era at St. Thomas and saw the value in our Catholic education. They were willing to put in hours after work and on the weekends to make sure we raised enough money to keep the school going. As a child, I was acutely aware that if I did not invite other students to attend our school or participate in the fundraisers, the school would shutter its doors at any moment. It was as if the future of the Catholic faith rested on the shoulders of our tiny school.  

The thirteen years of my education at St. Thomas are filled with mixed emotions. Some emotions filled with pride for the way our small community came together to keep the legacy of education alive. Some emotions are filled with mortification as I remember the years we barely fielded a basketball team of five willing girls. I can still hear the remarks opposing teams’ fans would make that we “must have left the other ten girls back on the bus.” 

I confidently say that my time within St. Thomas’s history was one which built character for me in happy and even in painful ways. Most of all it instilled in me my love for literature, language and theology–disciplines that sustain me. Concurrently, I can also say that I fear for the school’s future if it cannot compete with the facilities, class sizes, and changing opinions on Catholic education in other public school districts. As a student, I felt St. Thomas was distanced from the heart of the Diocese because we were far away geographically and were without the support and oversight we needed to thrive. Because of this, many families who attended churches in Marinette saw no need to send their children to St. Thomas for Catholic education. Without our Diocesan community’s support for the oldest parochial school in the state of Wisconsin, I fear that there will no longer be Catholic secondary education north of Green Bay, and the young souls throughout the entire region will suffer because we failed to edify Catholic education.

St. Thomas Aquinas Academy has persevered through trial after trial in its 150 years. From the utter destruction of the Peshtigo Fire, nearly closing its doors several times, encountering two world wars, 29 presidents, and changing state policies on private education, the school has persevered by the grace of God. I hope and pray that Catholics throughout the Diocese are awakened to the educational asset in their own backyard before it is too late. Without thriving Catholic schools in our Diocese like St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, the truth of salvation is withheld from those we are tasked with evangelizing.