Lasallian Volunteers alum Marilyn Paquette will use her experience as an LV and a Lasallian educator as she leads a new middle school to serve low-income students. Paquette will become principal of De La Salle Academy in Concord, CA, a division of De La Salle High School in Concord, which will open for the 2014-2015 school year.
De La Salle Academy will be a Miguel model school serving fifth through eighth graders and have its own campus in Concord. In announcing the new school, De La Salle High School’s President Mark DeMarco called it, “a middle school that will provide high-quality, Catholic, Lasallian education to students from low-income families, and will prepare them at an early age to succeed in high school, college, and beyond.”
Paquette will continue her service to the Lasallian mission when she becomes principal of De La Salle Academy on July 1 after serving for three years as dean of women at Justin-Siena High School in Napa, CA. As an LV, she taught from 1999-2001 at The San Miguel School of Providence in Rhode Island. She is an alumna of Saint Mary’s College of California in Moraga, and she has served as a faculty member at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco.
“The opportunity to serve and lead in this expansion of De La Salle High School’s Lasallian ministry is something I feel called to,” Paquette said. “I believe that my knowledge of, and experience in, a San Miguel school, my experience as a Lasallian Volunteer, and the network of Lasallian educators I have relationships with will all be invaluable in forming this new ministry.”
A generous donation from Kenneth H. Hofmann will fund De La Salle Academy for the first five years. Admission will be only for boys whose families live at less than 185 percent of the federal poverty level. Parents will pay some portion of their student’s costs, on a sliding scale, as part of the “parental buy-in” that is a crucial component of the Miguel model, but the school will not be tuition-driven.
The projected first-year enrollment is 15 students in fifth grade and 15 in sixth grade, with an eventual enrollment of 60 students in grades five through eight.
More on De La Salle High School’s website
Read the story in the Contra Costa Times