Mount St. Mary's Academy looks forward to its 150th anniversary next week, and The Union is taking a look at the school and its rich past, and at the challenges it faces for the future.

Throughout the decades the private Catholic school — the oldest continually running Catholic school west of the Mississippi — has met the needs of western Nevada County by educating its children, grooming its 19th century young ladies for marriage and taking in the orphaned children of its gold miners.

Throughout that century and a half, Mount St. Mary's — more than anything else — has focused on serving the community, especially as a faith center for area families.

That service included fun, and over the years, Mount St. Mary's hosted monthly dances open to the community — something being revived next Saturday night.

Though the actual anniversary of the school's founding was on Dec. 5, organizers plan a host of activities for the weekend of May 1-2 — and they invite their community to come and celebrate with them.

Mount St. Mary's Academy 150th anniversary Saturday, May 1 • 8:30 a.m.: 5K Fun Run • 11 a.m.: Opening ceremonies, officiated by Bishop Garcia • 11:30 a.m.: Live music by Road Test • 3:15 a.m.: Raffle drawing • 7 to 11 p.m.: Community dance, featuring live music by Aunt B and the Hula Dogs, appetizers by Bill's Chuckwagon, no-host bar at St. Patrick's hall (next to the church) • All-day events, starting at 11:30 a.m.: Living history and open museum, Mount St. Mary's open house, children's Fun Zone (games, bounce house, crafts, prizes), 50 vendors Sunday, May 2 • 9 a.m.: Mass co-celebrated by the Rev. Salvatore Tassone, a graduate of Mount St. Mary's; a group of children will lay flowers at the image of Mary. • 10 a.m.: Knights of Columbus host a breakfast after Mass in the hall next door.

School balances tradition, modern-day academics

Tradition blends with the modern at Mount St. Mary's Academy.

Some of the same family names appear on the attendance rolls as were listed decades ago — though the progeny of the school's graduates are ushered through the halls by teachers wearing sweaters and slacks rather than nun's habits.

New teaching methods mix with the values of a millennia-old faith as the Catholic school in Grass Valley marks its 150th anniversary.

Some families come to the school seeking tradition in the midst of modern life, said Principal Edee Wood.

“We've seen a lot of families who were raised Catholic and maybe strayed from the church get back into their own faith through their children,” Wood said.

Though they may find a school a little different than the Mount St. Mary's of their youth.

First, the Sisters of Mercy — the nuns who ran the school nearly since its inception — have been replaced by lay people. The shift corresponds with the nationwide aging of nuns, presenting a challenge to the local school.

Lay people need salaries and benefits, which nuns didn't require, said Trisha Ridens, a kindergarten teacher who is one of the last at the school to have worked with the Sisters.

“It's a difficulty for Catholic schools financially,” Wood said, adding the school has difficulty offering pay competitive with public schools. “We say the work is a ministry. It's really a kind of calling.”

That doesn't deter Wood from seeking top-flight candidates for the school, she said.

“Our parents have certain expectations of our teachers,” Wood said. “We're looking for people who are dedicated and passionate, who are willing to work hard and be creative.”

Talented people are needed to keep up with the advanced students Mount St. Mary's attracts, Ridens said, who has been at the school more than 20 years.

Today's kindergartners are now expected to master the skills that first- and second-graders were working on just a decade ago.

“I've got students reading and writing in kindergarten,” Ridens said. The trend for higher expectations has spread to all grade levels.

Yet as teachers strive to keep up with students, the same duties remain, and that includes discipline.

While the cliché of a nun smacking a student's knuckles with a ruler isn't a reality at Mount St. Mary's, discipline at the school remains stern, Wood said. Parents and students receive clear behavior guidelines, which makes her job easy, Wood said.

Good behavior school-wide allows the students a “free-dress Monday,” a chance to enjoy an alternative their uniform collared shirt and khaki pants or plaid skirt for a day.

“They hate to miss it,” Wood said.

Students receive a religious education as well as the skills to prepare them for high school, Wood said. Teachers instill critical thinking skills. Starting in fourth grade, students go to different classrooms for some specialized subjects.

“We want them to leave here and have that sense of really wanting an education,” Wood said.

The school's educators also know their students need to be academically and socially ready to adapt and assimilate to their new high schools after they graduate from the K-8 campus, Wood said.

Those who head off to Nevada Union High School leave a class of 15 to enter a school with enrollment in the thousands. But, Wood points out, students participate in a number of extracurricular activities with public school students and can sample several pursuits at MSM to prepare them for the next level.

“A lot of our kids play two to three sports at a time, speak in front of the church at Mass and are so well-acclimated to being in different situations,” Wood said. “They are very comfortable with who they are.”

Attendance rolls in the 128-student school have shown the effects of the current economic recession, even though the numbers stayed consistent.

Some families have defected from public schools, where they see growing class size and declining support staff as a stumbling block for their children's future, Wood said.

On the flip side, covering the $4,000 per student annual tuition can be a burden on parents who have lost a job, or who already are stretched by the area's relatively high housing prices coupled with lower median wages.

“Tuition collection has been a little difficult,” Wood said. Parishioners at St. Patrick's Church help with an adopt-a-student tuition assistance account, but those funds have shrunk.

“Everyone is in the same situation. If I offer tuition assistance to a family, I need to go out and find that money somewhere else,” Wood said. “But, we don't want families who have been here since preschool worrying about that.”

The school pitches in to help struggling families by sharing uniforms, Wood said. At a place where community service is mandated for students and parents, helping out comes naturally, Wood said.

Belt-tightening isn't limited to the school's families.

“We're looking at everything we can do to not impact the classroom,” Wood said. “We're cutting the simplest things, like electricity. We buy all of our supplies on discount, and we really are focusing on our fundraising.”

Parents — who must offer 40 hours of service each year — spend 20 of those hours on fundraising.

The other half comes from working in the classroom, which Wood said has a positive impact on student achievement. The family nature of the school is its biggest draw, she added.

“Our families love Mt. St. Mary's. It truly is a wonderful place for kids,” Wood said. “It's a place where the kids can come succeed, and their parents can help.”

Now and then: The history of Mount St. Mary's

In the 1859-60 school year, Mount St. Mary's Academy opened with about 120 students a group of lay teachers.

Strictly by the numbers, little has changed over the past 150 years. The school opened the 2009-10 school year with 128 students and a group of lay teachers.

But in between now and then is a history as rich and interesting as Grass Valley itself, embracing its founding by Father Thomas J. Dalton; his call to the Sisters of Mercy, the nuns who staffed the school for most of its existence; the school's long tenure as an orphanage until the late 1920s.

That history includes the school falling on hard times in the late 1970s, only to rebound, ensuring the grandchildren of long-ago students would continue to enjoy a Catholic education.

As the oldest continuously-operating Catholic school west of the Mississippi, Mount St. Mary's history is the part of the place's charm.

Sister Sheila Devereux, who served as the school's principal in the early 1980s, found an interesting tidbit from the Sisters of Mercy archives while looking into the history of Mount St. Mary's.

The sisters, who responded to Fr. Dalton's call for help in 1862, arrived in Grass Valley from their homes in San Francisco to find the town's mining citizenry to be a raunchy lot.

“It's a town of primitive sensibilities and even more crude and violent than San Francisco,” the sisters wrote. “Grass Valley sadly needed the humanizing ministrations of the Sisters of Mercy.”

Originally from Ireland by way of San Francisco, the Sisters immediately set to the work of building the school and taking in the orphaned children of miners killed by accidents and disease.

The school operated separately from St. Patrick's Parish for much of its lifetime, becoming a parish school in the 1980s.

It served a number of functions throughout the early decades: An orphanage, a boarding school, and a finishing school for young ladies who learned to entertain and play the piano.

At one time, the curriculum included a business school for graduates.

The sisters eventually made up a vast majority of the teaching staff, teaching everything from music to astronomy and geometry.

After the turn of the 20th century, fewer and fewer of the sisters came from Ireland, and in 1921 the last of the Irish came to the school, according to records.

In the late 1920s, the order merged with the Sisters of Mercy of the Union in Omaha, Neb., to combat depleting numbers, according to records.

The school ceased to be an orphanage shortly thereafter, in 1932.

Carlos Astesana attended Mount St. Mary's from 1940 to 1953. The Grass Valley resident went on to watch his children and grandchildren matriculate through the campus.

His schoolmates mirrored the town's demographic at that time, Astesana said.

“We were all miners' kids in those days,” he recalled. “We were all pretty poor, but back then, the sisters didn't get any remuneration, so our family could afford to send us there.”

Salvatore Tassone graduated from the school in 1950. Now a Jesuit priest teaching at Santa Clara University, he remembers students scraping together every dime for war bonds during World War II.

“It was a very good education, but it was pretty tough,” Tassone said. “We had some very good programs. I took Latin in high school.”

While most of their classmates were Catholic, not all were. Devereux speculated that then, as now, families who weren't Catholic still recognized the value of a private education.

The school served kindergarten through high school until 1968, when it eliminated the high school program.

And about a decade ago, the last Sister of Mercy left the teaching staff, leaving the education entirely in the hands of the laity.

As the 1970s wore on, the school changed again. It steadily lost enrollment until 1979, when the Sisters called upon Devereux to right the ship. She joined a school in transition, as the Sisters only made up about 50 percent of the teaching staff.

“There was a diminishing number of sisters in the community,” Devereux said. “We didn't have a large influx of young people coming” into the order.

The school started to add enrollment under Devereux's leadership, recalled former School Board President Don Eagle, who sent his three children to MSM after moving to the area from San Jose in the late 1970s.

A school board formed to provide direction. Both Devereux and Eagle commended the board for helping to turn things around.

“That school board was composed a handful of very talented, dedicated and active individuals,” Eagle said. Parents pitched in for school trips to destinations such as the San Francisco Opera, providing a well-rounded education, Eagle said.

Eagle also pointed to the school's substantial history as a benefit to the students.

“Coming from the San Jose area, I'm not sure my kids got the diverse environment you get in Grass Valley,” he said. “It added a lot to our children's education because it was really rich in history. I think that magnifies a lot of the stuff you learn in school.”

But the loss of participation by the Sisters of Mercy ended an era in the school's rich tradition, said Devereux, who is semi-retired and living in San Francisco.

“I think (the students) are getting a very good education,” Devereux said. “But they may be missing some of the history and folklore the Sisters could pass on.”

At 20-plus years on the job, kindergarten teacher Trisha Ridens is one of the last teachers still at the school who worked with the Sisters. She sent her own six children to the school, and now has grandchildren there.

Through all the changes, the school has maintained its core set of values — a faith-based education with a strong emphasis on service to the community, Ridens said.

“That's the thread through all the years,” Ridens said. “When you look back through the history of this school, it reaffirms how much we value service in this community.”

To contact Staff Writer Kyle Magin, e-mail kmagin@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4239.