Loyola College Prep
Loyola College Prep is a private Catholic coeducational high school in Shreveport, Louisiana, founded by the Society of Jesus, but now operated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shreveport. It is among the oldest functioning former Jesuit high schools in the United States.
History and Jesuit Origins
Originally a high school for boys, St. John Berchmans College opened on November 2, 1902, by the Rev. John Francis O'Connor, S.J., of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus. At that time, high school classes and the first two years of college were offered. O'Connor was invited by Bishop Anthony Durier of the Diocese of Natchitoches to establish a new church and a high school for boys in Shreveport. The school was first located on the north side of the 1500 block of Texas Avenue, and moved to its present location on Jordan Street in 1938 simply as St. John’s High School. It was a full-time military school during the World War II years. In order to bolster awareness of its independence from the grade school and Catholic Parish of the same name, as well as to honor the long-standing service of the Jesuits, the number of which peaked at the school in the 1950s, St John's name was changed in 1960 to Jesuit High School of Shreveport while Rev. Charles A. Leininger, S.J., was principal. Leininger served in that role from 1955 to 1965.By the mid-1960s there was a growing concern among the Jesuits over the falling number of recruits to the Order. Consequently, the New Orleans Province couldn’t expect to continue fully staffing all its Jesuit schools with priests in the future. The only way to keep the schools open was to hire more lay teachers. In 1971, Rev. Thomas H. Clancy, S.J., the Provincial Superior of the New Orleans Province, officially notified the Shreveport school that it would no longer have a Jesuit as principal once the current contract expired, although it did have a Jesuit president/rector and a small number of Jesuit faculty members for the next decade. The driving forces for keeping the school alive during this period were largely provided by Rev. John Robert "Jack" Welsh, S. J., and his father J. Robert Welsh.. The Jesuits maintained academic and religious oversight of the school while a newly established board of trustees, presided over by J. Robert Welsh took over fiduciary responsibility, assuming the school's debt, in 1969. The last Jesuit principal of the school was Rev. Roy E. Schilling, S.J., serving from 1965 to 1972, while the last Jesuit president was Rev. Ernest “E.J.” Jacques.
1972 to present
In 1972, the Board of Trustees at the Shreveport school hired its first lay principal, Robert Henry Ernst, who served in this capacity for 13 years until his retirement in 1985. His tenure remains the longest by any principal in the school's history. Ernst was very carefully selected. He was a veteran Catholic educator who had begun his career as a teacher in the Midwestern United States in 1944, becoming a principal for the first time at a Catholic high school in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1957. His entire career was spent in parochial schools. At Jesuit, Ernst was highly respected by the governing board of trustees, as well as the faculty and staff. Under his incumbency, a number of noteworthy changes took place. He is remembered for implementing the SQ3R reading comprehension method in the 1970s. The school began offering Advanced Placement courses in 1981-82, to give its students an opportunity to receive college credit while in high school. Finally, it was during the Ernst years that the Society of Jesus ultimately relinquished all control of the school in 1982 to the Diocese of Alexandria-Shreveport. That is when the school took on its present name, Loyola College Prep, in recognition of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. In 1984, Ernst was awarded Key to the City of Shreveport.Girls were admitted to Loyola for the first time in 1987, in an attempt to circumvent the dwindling student enrollment that had been occurring since 1980 from a downturn in the local economy. St. Vincent's Academy, a local Catholic high school for girls founded in 1868 by the Order of the Daughters of the Cross, was approached by Loyola in 1986 about the possibly of a merger, but they declined the offer to further conduct serious discussions. St Vincent's had also been experiencing financial difficulties of its own and, as a result, closed in 1988. Although each school was wholly autonomous in an administrative, fiduciary, and academic sense, by the later years of their coexistence, Loyola and St Vincent's had come to be informally regarded by many members of the community as more-or-less partner schools because they often participated in joint extracurricular activities in a manner that seemed to emulate a coeducational institution. For example, the girl cheerleaders at Jesuit High School football games were St. Vincent's students, who wore uniforms with the Jesuit team colors of blue and white. This spirit of unity or association was further evident in their choices of school mascots. Since 1966, Loyola's has been Snoopy while St. Vincent's was Woodstock, sidekicks from the Peanuts comic strip.
In 2005, Loyola temporarily admitted nearly 200 displaced students from several Catholic high schools damaged by Hurricane Katrina in south Louisiana.
Faculty
A number of faculty and staff throughout the school's history have served forty or more consecutive years. Although current assistant principal and alumnus Anthony Rinaudo originally joined the school as an assistant football coach in 1971 and later become head football coach and then athletic director, he left numerous times before returning permanently in 2002. The current faculty member with the longest continuous service is Mike Mawhinney, who has taught and coached at the school since 1976. However, Gerald W. Johnson has had the longest tenure of any faculty or staff member in the school's history with a notable 46 years of service, beginning in 1963 and ending with his retirement in 2009. Johnson was a mathematics and physics instructor who also served as Prefect of Discipline, assistant principal, and as principal from 1986 to 1989. The previous record of 45 years was held by physical science teacher Frank J. Cicero, who joined the school in 1950 and retired in 1995. Cicero also coached football for 16 years and baseball for 27 years, over which time he compiled a 270-172-4 record, including six district championships, state runner-up, and two state championships. The current Flyer baseball field is named Frank Cicero Field in his honor and Warrington Place, the street adjacent to the school campus on the east side, was renamed Cicero Street in 1996, the year after his retirement. Cicero is the only faculty member to have taught at the school under all three of its names, St. John's, Jesuit, and Loyola..Every member of the current faculty holds a college degree and is certified, while 40% hold a Master's degree or beyond.
Facilities
The major structures on the Jordan Street campus are a three level classroom building constructed in two phases - the first half of the high school, including a cafeteria and chemistry laboratory, was completed in 1938, and the second half, including a library and physics laboratory, was completed in 1949; a four level classroom building that opened in 1929 as a residence hall for Jesuit priests; a gymnasium including boys' dressing rooms; a girls' dressing room building ; a new cafeteria building ; and the single story Anderson building used for various administrative offices.The Loyola Athletic Complex opened in 2002. It is located on Clyde Fant Memorial Parkway and includes Messmer Stadium, Cicero Field, St. Vincent’s Field and the Flyer Field House.
Academics
Loyola announced in 2008 that eight juniors were named as National Merit Scholars, the highest number in the school's history. Ten students won awards at the 2008 Louisiana State Rally held April 19 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.Loyola won the Sweepstakes Award for Division III schools participating in the 2007 Northwest Louisiana High School Literary Rally, held at Northwestern State University on March 32. Eleven students won awards at the Louisiana State Rally held April 21 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
Loyola was named on the Acton Institute's first Catholic High School Honor Roll. Membership is limited to the top 50 Catholic schools in the United States. This honor roll recognizes those schools that best maintain high academic standards, uphold their Catholic identities, and prepare students to actively engage the world.
Loyola graduation requirements include the completion of 100 hours of community service with an approved non-profit organization or project dedicated to helping individuals with special needs.
Regular student print publications are the newspaper, The Flyer, and the annual yearbook, Flight. The communications office produces the electronic E-Flyer and ParentFlyer.