NEWARK’S ST. BENEDICT’S: Acts as aggressive charters imperil Catholic schools |

NEWARK’S ST. BENEDICT’S: Acts as aggressive charters imperil Catholic schools |:

NEWARK’S ST. BENEDICT’S: Acts as aggressive charters imperil Catholic schools

Changes at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark

Newark’s St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, for nearly 150 years an all-boys’ secondary school, is about to become what its headmaster calls a “pioneering” hybrid, expanding to include both elementary schooling and co-education–with girls admitted to its middle school division for the first time in its history.

 The upper division of the prep school–a 9th through 12th grade high school that has attracted national attention for success in educating inner-city young men–will remain all-boys. Its Middle Division–7th and 8th grades–will enroll both boys and girls. Previously, the middle school–which dates back to the 1970s–had enrolled only boys.

“We will be developing separate leadership and extracurricular activities for girls in the middle division,” explained Rev. Edwin Leahy, OSB, a St. Benedict’s alumnus who has been the school’s headmaster since 1973. “We are now shaping how that will happen.”

Rev. Edwin Leahy, OSB

St. Benedict’s also will now operate a co-educational K-6 elementary school.

 In some ways, the changes are more form than substance. For years, St. Mary School, an archdiocesan elementary school–and one of the largest Nigerian-American parishes in the nation–operated out of facilities owned by the Benedictine Abbey, the NEWARK’S ST. BENEDICT’S: Acts as aggressive charters imperil Catholic schools |: