Welcome to Saint Mary's School
Thank you for considering Saint Mary’s School for your child’s education. We believe we have a wonderful school and an extraordinary “family” here and would love to have you become a member. We have a rich tradition of quality Catholic education that stretches back over 117 years. If you choose Saint Mary’s, I am confident that you will be pleased with the spiritual and prayerful atmosphere here as well as the instruction your child will receive in our Christian faith. In addition, you will be impressed with the quality of the academic curriculum and the athletic and extra-curriculum and the athletic and extra-curricular offerings.
If you need further information about any aspect of the Saint Mary’s School experience, please do not hesitate to call or visit. I would be happy to meet with you.
Alan Powers
Principal
Annual Events:
Steak Supper Football Jamboree – Mid-August
Homecoming – October
Book Fair – November
Grandparent’s Day – November
Christmas Program -- Mid-December
Spring Fling – 1st weekend in May
Baccalaureate/Graduation – May
Registration:
Begins mid-January for presently enrolled students, 3 years old to 12th grade.
Open enrollment begins in February.
Forms available on our web site: www.smstigers.com
Registration fee due with completed application.
Call the office for current tuition scale.
News and Events:
Spring Fling Draw Down – January at 5:00 p.m. at the Natchitoches Events Center. Visit www.smstigers.com for more information or call (318) 352-8394.
Spring Fling Festival– May
Spring Fling Chicken Dinner -- May
Baccalaureate & Senior Graduation – May
A History of Saint Mary’s School 1888- 2006
Saint Mary’s School continues a tradition of excellence in Catholic education which began over a century ago when five Sisters of Divine Providence came from San Antonio, Texas, to Natchitoches to found a boarding and day academy for girls in 1888.
Two years later, the third Bishop of Natchitoches, Antoine Durier, opened another Catholic school, this one a high school for boys, with one teacher and twenty students. In 1893, the two schools merged, incorporating as Saint Mary’s Academy, and Catholic education was firmly established in Natchitoches Parish. At the beginning of the second year, the new Academy had an enrollment of one hundred students and a faculty of seven nuns.
The Catholic education presence in Natchitoches soon expressed itself visibly in the form of impressive buildings on the highest ground in the town at 212 Rue Touline. In addition to the handsome brick school building, the Academy had a two-story frame structure which served both as a convent for the teachers and as a dormitory for boarding students. In 1946, the Academy property was expanded so that Saint Mary’s filled the south side of Third Street between Rue Touline and Church Street. Continued growth and cramped space combined to require moving the school to a new location, the present site in east Natchitoches. All that remains of the old Academy are the ruins of a Marian grotto and an ornamental pillared wall along Rue Touline.
Three hundred and forty-three students and eight Sisters of Divine Providence moved into the new Saint Mary’s on February 12, 1967, fifteen months after construction began. The new school, with spacious grounds, was designed to serve an enrollment of five hundred, and the Sisters continued to teach at Saint Mary’s until 1971.