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Bay St. Louis Opens Joint Elementary School
The third grade classroom on St. Rose campus creatively invites students to learn. Another third grade classroom is located on Our Lady of the Gulf campus.
School bells started ringing in the Bay St. Louis area this week to welcome 398 students to a new school — the Bay St. Louis Catholic Elementary School.
The new school, the only one if its kind in the Catholic school system in the state, joins together two schools — St. Rose de Lima and Our Lady of the Gulf — as one system of elementary education for the two parishes in the city of Bay St. Louis.
The school is the result of a directive issued in April 1975 by Bishop Brunini.
All plans for preparation and actual carrying out of the directive were done on the local level by the two school principals, pastors, school boards, and parish council presidents acting as an Ad Hoc Committee.
The committee’s aim was to set up an ideal school and to do this they decided to spend one year in preparation.
Last summer a Cross Cultural Impact Study was made by a professional team since one school was predominately black and the other predominately white.
In the fall, Sister Celeste Seymour, SSpS, the former principal of St. Rose, was selected as the new principal of the joint school.
During the 1975-76 school year, teacher exchange programs were held, the constitution and by-laws for a joint school board were drawn up and approved, members of the new school board were elected, a budget adopted, registration held, and teacher contracts signed. During the summer, both physical plants were arranged for the new set up.
When the school bells rang on Aug. 23, first, second and third graders began classes on the St. Rose campus and the fourth, fifth and sixth graders began their new year on the OLG campus.
“From the beginning, everything that we did was done in
The library on the Our Lady of the Gulf campus is a warm, cheerful atmosphere for learning.
the open,” Sister Celeste said. “We wanted to keep the lines of communications open. Naturally there were some disappointing moments but for the most part we had a lot of pleasant surprises.
“Everyone — Sister Patricia Sullivan, the former principal of OLG; the two school boards, the ad hoc committee, the pastors, the teachers, the parents, the religious in the area — have been very supportive and bent over backwards to be of assistance in the merger,” she said.
“We realized from the beginning, that the new system gave us an opportunity to be innovative,” Sister Celeste said. “We looked at the weak and strong points of both schools and retained the best from each.”
Sister Celeste said the chief motivating force during the entire preparation time has been how they could best offer the students an atmosphere of spiritual growth.
“We believe that if we have a good foundation spiritually, that by that very fact the academic program will be the best we can give,” she said.
“Our school,” she said, “is a step in the direction of uniting two Christian communities to be the ‘compelling and credible sign of His (Jesus) presence’ in a world so desperately in need of a sign of hope and love.”
In the school handbook especially prepared for its first year of operation, the Bay St. Louis Catholic Elementary School offers two major goals:
1.	To integrate religion with the rest of learning and living by enabling its students to hear the message of Christ contained in the Gospels and to base their service and love of God upon this message.
2.	To recognize the uniqueness of each individual by providing structures that will enable him to develop at his own rate.
All classes will incorporate an individual progression approach to learning and the intermediate grades — 4, 5 and 6 — will be completely departmentalized with students moving from classroom to classroom for different subjects. Both campuses will have special education centers. All teachers are properly certified.
“We feel ready for the year,” Sister Celeste said, “and I’m sure we’ll learn a lot since we have no pattern to follow. But we’re doing what we think is best. We’ll take it day by day. We’ll think and reason out our problems. After we complete this first year, we’ll evaluate our programs and approaches and make the necessary changes for further growth.”
Sister Celeste Seymour, former principal at St. Rose School, now serves as principal over the joint school system.
The faculty on St. Rose campus are (l-r) Sister Dulcinea, special education; Mrs. Millie Rutledge, first grade; Mrs. Gaynell Blaize, second grade; Mrs. Olive McKenna, first
grade; Mrs. Kay Gleber, second grade; Mrs. Dorothy Bradley, third grade; Mrs. Patty Young, first grade; and Ms. Lucinda Lizana, third grade.
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ir Lady of the Gulf campus faculty members & (l-r) Ms. Rose Smith, special education; iter Marie Celine, reading; Mrs. Jerilyn sey, art; Mrs. Sandra Compretta, kin
dergarten; Ms. Joan Thomas, social studies; Kenneth Banks, science; Ms. Susan Ellzey, language arts and music; and Sister Adelmara, mathematics.