New Catholic girls high school represents turnaround for Detroit area

St. Catherine of Siena Academy is first newly built Catholic girls' school in archdiocese since 1965
Sept. 8, 2011

From The Detroit Free Press: A year after starting classes in temporary space, St. Catherine of Siena Academy has opened a $17-million, state-of-the-art facility in Wixom, Mich. It is the first from-the-ground-up Catholic girls high school built in the six-county Archdiocese of Detroit since 1965, when Mercy High relocated from Detroit to Farmington Hills. And last month, near Romeo, 10 students began ninth-grade classes at Austin Catholic Academy, the start of a coed Catholic high school in northern Macomb County. The two recent openings serve Catholic families in parts of Oakland, Livingston and Macomb counties and represent a turnaround in what has been a shrinking school system. Since 1998, Catholic schools in the archdiocese have declined from 170 schools with 56,862 students to 99 schools with 32,000.

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