st. agnes school

'Close-Knit' School Community Slides into 60th Year

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 8/31/06)

The August back-to-school sun blazed down on parents, students and teachers celebrating the 60th anniversary of St. Agnes School on Sunday with a Mass, open house and the blessing of a sleek new playground. Children waited excitedly outside the fence surrounding the clean brown and green structure for Father Lee Roos, pastor, to finish sprinkling the shiny surfaces with holy water.
Following the blessing, the path from the playground to the school bustled as students and parents visited the classrooms and met the teachers who will be an integral part of their upcoming school year.
St. Agnes School opened in August 1946 under the guidance of the Sisters of Notre Dame. Beginning with 200 students and five grades, the sisters led the school through years of growth and building additions. Over time, the religious teachers have been replaced almost entirely by professional lay educators.
Principal Kristine Carr, who watched three daughters go through the school’s ranks, said the school is using this anniversary to “look back at the tradition” of the school and the Sisters of Notre Dame.
The school is entering a “self-study year,” where it will develop a five-year plan, she said. In doing so, they will try to keep the old traditions alive.
“It’s a year to really celebrate the past and the future,” Carr added.
Father Roos said that the 60-year milestone for the school will serve as “a recommitment to all that will help us to serve others and in so doing to serve God.
“Let us remember from where we have come these last 60 years,” he said during his homily. "The purpose of Catholic education is to prepare young people to take their part in society and in the Church. By helping them to become the human person whom God created them to be, they find that they draw closer to God in faith."
St. Agnes parishioner David Engebritson graduated from St. Agnes School in 1974. His wife, Diane, also a product of Catholic education, has taught at the school for the past six years and will be a co-teacher, instead of a teacher’s assistant, for her kindergarten class for the first time this year. Their two children, Amanda and Eric, entered the seventh and eighth grades at St. Agnes this week. To say that Catholic school runs in the family would be an understatement.
“I’ve been in Catholic education all the way through,” David said. “We believe in the education and everything that goes along with it.” He spoke while watching Diane hug and welcome rising kindergarteners in the same building where he had been welcomed years ago.
“I always liked the school, the environment, how the kids are taught well,” he said. “Here they get not only the education, but the spiritual (angle). They’re taught good things” and are given “the whole experience.”
Lee Morris, chairman of the 60th anniversary steering committee and past PTO president, was instrumental in kicking off the celebratory year.
“The school is a very stable place,” said Morris, who has three boys enrolled at St. Agnes. “People have been coming here for generations. It’s a very close-knit community.”
An open house is always scheduled for the day before school starts so that parents and students can meet teachers, Morris said. It was a happy coincidence that the playground, which was purchased with funds raised from auctions throughout the year and has been under construction since the end of the last school year, was finished at the same time.
“We wanted to do something simple for the kids,” Morris said. “It’s a chance to celebrate together.”