LYNN — St. Mary’s Lynn is returning to its roots.
For the first time in nearly 50 years, the school will be a K-12 institution.
But before the school could welcome more than 150 students from kindergarten through fifth grade to campus, it needed some major renovations.
Jeff Newhall works as the school’s director of campus operations, along with serving as athletic director and girls basketball coach.
When he found out earlier this year that the school would soon be welcoming students in grades K-5 who were formerly housed at Sacred Heart on Boston Street, Newhall got to work creating classrooms to house the incoming students.
Soon after the school year ended in June, Newhall led efforts to construct four classrooms, a specialized reading room, a nurse’s office and a guidance office out of what had been two large science labs for the high school in the building known as Monsignor McGlinchey Hall.
Despite some skepticism that work would be finished before students arrived on campus this month, Newhall teamed up with Stueve Contracting to get the new classrooms ready to go.
“(Stueve Contracting) said they could get it done,” Newhall, a former school committee member, who is also running for Ward 1 city councilor, said. “I was questioning it, but here we are, ready to go.”
The campus will also feature a separate kindergarten building, the Cardinal Cushing Center Annex, which had previously been used as a storage space, a conference room and at one point, a bingo hall.
“This space probably needed the most work,” Newhall said. “We probably hadn’t used it in 10 years.”
The rehabbed space will now house two kindergarten classrooms, as well as offices.
The campus will also feature new recess and school yard space that students in grades K-5 will use.
Established in 1881, the more than 400-student St. Mary’s Grammar School closed for financial reasons nearly a half-century ago as enrollment numbers slipped and high operating costs mounted. St. Mary’s added a girls’ high school in 1923 and a boys’ high school in 1930. The high schools merged in 1968. The middle school began with seventh and eighth grades in 1990, with the sixth grade added in 2011.
Assistant Principal Justina Gaeta, who is in charge of the elementary school division, will serve as the first person at the helm of St. Mary’s elementary students since St. Mary’s Grammar School Principal Sister Marie St. Barbara, who was in charge of the school when it closed in 1975.
Gaeta said she hoped that the elementary school would grow the way that the high school and junior high school have.
“St. Mary’s (grade) 6-12 has really been gaining attention,” Gaeta said. “It’s gaining more and more popularity and it’s only going to grow … We’re just becoming more and more desirable.”
Pupils from kindergarten through fifth grade will join the sixth through 12th grade students on the Tremont Street campus when school begins next week.
Newhall said many of the classroom materials from Sacred Heart were moved to the new St. Mary’s elementary space by student workers and Facilities Manager David Giarusso.
According to Gaeta, almost all of the school’s teachers came from Sacred Heart with the exception of new teachers for first and third grade.
Dr. John F. Dolan, head of school at St. Mary’s, said the inclusion of the seasoned staff from Sacred Heart was crucial to curbing skepticism from families.
“Parents were interested in how this was going to work (and) if this was really going to work,” Dolan said. “I think that gave us street cred with the returning population.”
Jenna Foley, a third-generation alumnus of St. Mary’s, will be the school’s first-grade teacher.
Foley, whose mother, Jackie, directs the middle school division and father, Jim, is the varsity girls soccer coach, had been working as a substitute at Sacred Heart and said she is excited to continue teaching with students in a community with which she has a deep connection.
“It has such a warm place in my heart,” Foley said. “This is my first year teaching, so coming back to a place where I’m comfortable is awesome.”
Foley, who graduated from Saint Anselm College in May, said she is looking forward to bringing fresh ideas and approaches into the new space.
“I’m really excited… we’re working on revamping the elementary school,” Foley said. “I’m excited to pilot a lot of these new programs that we’re working with.“
Dolan said he was eager to have all students of the school under one banner but had skepticism about how the campus would handle the influx of students.
“We had always had this vision of one campus,” Dolan said. “As we did the design we kind of felt better and better about it.”
Dolan credited the school’s leadership, especially that of Newhall and Gaeta, for their work over the summer to get the school ready.
“It’s going to be different,” Dolan said. “Leadership is everything in a transition like this.”
