St. Monica Academy to move into new Montrose facility
A new sign for St. Monica Academy has gone up on top of the Holy Redeemer School sign in front of Holy Redeemer Church in Montrose, on Wednesday, July 8, 2015. Holy Redeemer students will now move into St. James the Less in La Crescenta.
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Nearly 250 students of St. Monica Academy will move into the classrooms formerly occupied by students of Holy Redeemer School in Montrose, after a years-long search by St. Monica officials for a new facility.
St. Monica Academy was founded in 2001 in Pasadena following an effort driven by parents.
The school began with 44 students and has grown to 240 pupils in first through 12th grades, resulting in it outgrowing the church where it was formerly housed, said Marguerite Grimm, the school’s headmaster.
Along the way, it has also emerged as a school with sports team members who excel in athletics and academics.
The school’s various sports teams have made it to the CIF playoffs 22 times and have secured 13 league titles.
During the last school year, under coach Colleen Smith, the girls’ varsity basketball team won 18 consecutive games, while achieving the fourth-highest team grade-point average out of the 576 schools that are in the CIF Southern Section.
The coed school’s mission is centered around faith, reason and virtue under the Roman Catholic tradition.
Grimm joined the school as headmaster in 2006 after teaching at St. Paul High School in Santa Fe Springs and Cantwell-Sacred Heart of Mary High School in Montebello. She also worked as an educational specialist at Golden Valley Charter School.
She earned a bachelor’s in liberal arts at Thomas Aquinas College and later received her teaching certificate.
She said her combined experiences gave her an edge when she sought the headmaster’s position.
“I am versed in curricula from parochial, public and classical models,” she said in an email.
Grimm said parents enroll their children in the school as an alternative to their local public school or even a private one they may have initially tried — or they may have homeschooled their children previously.
“All come out of a desire to give their children a classical education,” she said. “The classical model emphasizes the good, the true and the beautiful. Our curriculum overflows with heroes, beautiful illustrations, moral literature, music, poetry, scripture, math and science,” she said.
The students who had attended sixth, seventh and eighth grade on the former Holy Redeemer School campus this past year will begin the next school year on the St. James campus in La Crescenta, where students in kindergarten through fifth grades already attend.