Old-World School Reopens, Blessed by Modern Amenities

1) Kindergarteners listen to a story on the first full day of school. The gleaming white walls of St. Catherine's Parish School's Spanish style buildings stand newly erected over a freshly paved parking lot. Trucks, tools and workers are still strewn about only days before this past Tuesday, when students first spilled into the town's newly reconstructed school. Though much of the $18 million project is finished, many final touches were still undone at the 39,700 square foot facility a week ago.

Principal Janice Callender meets me in the foyer flanked by Kathleen Krogius, a parish super mom, and Christine Almanza, a representative of the Diocese of Orange County.

As I walk around the St. Catherine's campus, I feel like I'm on vacation, perhaps on a Greek Island: white walls enclose courtyards overlooking the blue Pacific. Newly planted palms stand high above the quiet passageways between buildings.

It wasn't always this way.

"Parents would come up the driveway and turn around. They wouldn't even come in," said Krogius, of the previous, care-worn 50-year-old facilities.

2) L to R: Principal Janice Callender, Kathleen Krogius, and Christina Almanza discuss the beginning of a new school year in the computer lab. "The buildings didn't represent the thriving school and community that is St. Catherine's," added Callender.

As a private parochial school dependent on enrollment dollars, the exterior façade didn't do justice to the growth and learning going on here, the principal said. Operational and maintenance costs were growing, too.

Now, after a year-long reconstruction, the place looks like a university built into a Spanish style mission: old world on the outside, Smart Boards and a Mac lab on the inside. The school was built with a firewall, literally, on the side facing the hills, and tiles decorated by parish members line part of the main building.

A week later I'm back to get images of the kids in class. Callender proudly describes Father O'Gorman holding the first all-school mass in the new gym-basketball court. Afterward, he threw out the first basket - nothing but net on his first try.

3) The school's chapel and garden overlooks the ocean. The trucks in the distance are parked on the site of the future field and play area. I watch kids play on the same jungle gym turf where a few days ago a black mulch of discarded tires was applied. "The kids were so excited they had places to play and run and cool bathrooms and stuff like that," said Krogius, whose daughter Mckenna is excited about her new teacher.

Krogius' husband and five siblings attended St. Catherine's. Two of her four children have already graduated, and the others are in sixth and eighth grades. She hopes her grandchildren go there one day, though not to soon.

As the landscaping grows in and the lessons are taught this year, and again in following years, the students and teachers will carry this place toward a day when the time capsule buried in the chapel garden, will be opened on the school's 75th anniversary in 2032. Maybe Krogius' grandkids will be there to see them dig it up.

4) Krogius, Callender and Almanza inspect one of the new playgrounds. 5) Science teacher Judy Keneipp, in the new science room.