St. Jerome Academy

My children overall did not have a positive experience with St. Jerome Academy. We spent many years and had multiple children at the school. There are some truly phenomenal teachers and there are some truly terrible ones which is sort of par for the course with any school but there genuinely don't seem to be many way to address issues and expect improvement. There were serious problems with bullying that were sometimes exacerbated by the faculty rather than mitigated.My children have had bullying experiences at the schools they have moved to as well but now when those incidents happen I can expect to receive some sort of communication and my children are actually able to expect consequences and protection rather than lip service to formation. Academically St. Jerome does very well with recitation and reading. However, my oldest child is in high school now and with a number of the other graduates is behind in math and science. There are of course successful students in those subjects but they tend to be students who were already talented in those areas and had parents well positioned to support them in those subjects.As an example of a frustrating academic experience, one middle school child studied for a number of tests by simply memorizing the order of answers because the test did not vary from the study guide. I have no objections to their studying hack because it was sensible and efficient. This might have been a simple fix but at that point a confluence of events led us to decide to leave the school. The first thing I noticed when moving schools was the emphasis and formation in kindness and courtesy with actual consequences for bad behavior which were severely lacking. I didn't appreciate that previously children would more routinely get punished for dress code violations than for for bullying. The nurses often seemed overloaded with helping children with mental health issues since I knew of a number of children who went to the nurses office for a safe space. There was no counselor. At the time the resources were lacking and even if there were resources available the teachers failed at very basic accommodations for a neurodiverse child with a learning disability.Overall we've had to pay a great deal of money to fix some of the issues St. Jerome left us with and did not gain very much from the experience. I want to acknowledge that there are people having a marvelous time at St. Jerome but that just wasn't us.

My three children have attended St. Jerome Academy for their entire primary school (my eldest is about to graduate from 8th grade). I can honestly say that I had no idea that K-8 education could be as rich and engaging as the St. Jerome classical curriculum is. Instead of memorizing facts and figures and regurgitating them back for tests and exams, students are taught to question "why?" and "how?" and are not immediately given answers, but instead encouraged to explore the question and possibilities before learning the foundational elements and building off of them. Instead of learning each subject in an isolated silo, students see the interconnectedness of all the subjects. While learning about the American revolutionary war they read novels about the revolution, study art and music depicting the American revolution, engage in debates about Just War theory, and get dressed up in costume and present a 30 minute recitation of the Constitution and Patrick Henry's speech (as well as other famous American leader speeches) to the public on the Mall. When learning about Newton's laws of physics they spend weeks first exploring the laws and trying to understand them and explain them on their own through observation & hands on learning. Rather than simply being told to memorize multiplication tables "because math" (which the children of course eventually do) they go out and observe the outside of the school and try and count the number of bricks, and then learn how to group the bricks and count in multiples. Children learn Latin from 1st grade and my kids now have each decided to learn an additional romance language on their own (which the school has encouraged) and they've been surprised at what a breeze it is given the similarities with the Latin roots. My eldest daughter is WAY more prepared for high school (& higher ed) than I was at her age - not just from a standardized testing perspective (although she, as well as her classmates, are all well above the national average), but from a deep foundational perspective (as a young lady and as a student), not to mention her thirst for knowledge and love of learning, which St. Jerome Academy has instilled in her from the very beginning.

We used to homeschool but decided to put all our kids into St. Jerome Academy after they adopted the classical curriculum. The teachers are amazing, and our kids come home excited about what they are learning in class! I now have 4 kids at SJA in grades Montessori through 7th, and they are all thriving there.

I have had my child at this school since the child care center (she is not in 4th grade). She has had a well rounded and loving experience at St Jerome Academy. I could not be any happier with this school!

As Thanksgiving approaches, I am conscious of how very thankful I am that St. Jerome Academy is there for the Hyattsville community. The school has simply returned to and immersed itself in the Catholic Church's beautiful tradition of education and formation. They emphasize the cultivation of wisdom and virtue as the highest goods. This means that the literature selections are timeless and provoke thought and good discussion; science and math are gateways to wonder, not just means to well-paying jobs later; writing is approached as an art as well as a skill; and the teachers themselves are committed to this model of educating children. Much to be thankful for!