By Guest Blogger Melissa Kinsley, Director Marketing, Communications and Admissions
Choosing an elementary or middle school for your child should be as easy as placing the schools in an Excel spreadsheet and objectively measuring them against the criteria you have set for your child’s education. Whichever school gets the most checks in the most boxes is the school that should be the one selected.
There’s one more important check—the “gut check.” So, you schedule tours at each of the schools that meet your personal criteria. When you walk through the doors of the school, the last important question is does the school feels like “home?”
While “home” cannot be objectively defined, you know it when you experience it. Prospective parents who tour St. Leo Catholic School often share, “I knew when I walked through the door that this was the place for my child. I could just feel it.”
Rigorous academics? Check. Solid test scores? Check. 14:1 student to instructor ratio? Check. Athletics program? Check. Arts and performance program? Check. After school program? Check. It also offers families a place they can call home as it is a community rooted in academics, faith, service, arts and athletics.
St. Leo Catholic School focuses on the whole child—intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual. It offers a personalized educational program that recognizes that each child has unique gifts and talents that need to be nurtured and developed differently to reach his/her full potential. St. Leo Catholic School will exceed your educational expectations for your child.
Cornerstones of the St. Leo community are faith and service. Weekly Masses offer an opportunity for students and families to come together as a community. Students take part in a peer-to-peer mentoring program, Prayer Partners, that enable students to connect and forge friendships with students in other grades. The school’s focus on service to others is evident through Student Council fundraisers and class service projects such as fourth grade’s “adoption” of a family each Christmas and the fifth grade’s Lenten project Catholic Relief Service’s Rice Bowl.
You’ll also find a vital arts and music program at St. Leo. Students take music and art classes, as well as perform in annual shows. Students in K-4 put on the Christmas Program. While Middle school puts on the annual Middle School Spring Show. St. Leo also offers beginning and intermediate band.
Another way students feel at home at St. Leo Catholic School is by taking part in the Athletics program. The school offers volleyball, cheer, basketball, track and golf. Whichever sport your child may be interested in participating, your child will grow in sportsmanship and skill. Athletics offer another opportunity for families to get involved in the school community as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles come together to cheer the Lions on to victory.
St. Leo Catholic School is a truly a unique community. There are lots of opportunities for families to feel at home. Parents volunteer for various activities from leadership positions on the School, PTO or Athletics boards to serving as room parents to helping with class celebrations. Families also attend community-building events throughout the year starting with the Back-to-school Picnic to the Fall Festival to Grandparents’ Day to Run Leo to the Yearbook Picnic which wraps up the school year. Each of these events enable families to connect and build strong relationships that last well after their child graduates in eighth grade.
Parents whose children have graduated and gone on to other high schools note that the sense of community continues well after their children graduate. Classmates truly become lifelong friends that get together for student planned reunions and get-togethers over the years. Students also stop by the school to reconnect with teachers and to share news of college acceptance letters and other plans for their future.
St. Leo Catholic School is a place where your child’s educational, emotional, physical and spiritual needs will be nurtured. At St. Leo, students are prepared for the rigors of high school and for life as they grow in faith, knowledge and service. Once you become a St. Leo Lion, you’re a Lion for life. You’ll always have a home at St. Leo Catholic School.
*Sponsored by St. Leo Catholic School
