Following the recommendations of the Institute for Parish Services, which conducted a six month study for the future of Catholic education in Montgomery in the spring of last year, and the subsequent recommendation of Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School’s Board, Archbishop Lipscomb has asked Church of the Holy Spirit to include a preK-6 elementary school in conjunction with its need to build classroom facilities for religious education. Currently, Holy Spirit parents whose children attend C.C.D. classes must drive their children to Montgomery Catholic’s middle school each Sunday. An elementary school would alleviate that need and place a Catholic school in the center of the city’s fastest growing area.
Fr. Troncale, pastor of Holy Spirit, explains what’s next: “A new elementary/religious education facility is an important part of a broader plan for the development our twenty acre property. What our long range planning committee has been asking is: ‘What will our parish need for the year 2020?’ Census projections estimate we will grow from our current 835 families to as many as 1300-1500 families by then. So over the last three years, we’ve conducted a series of surveys and meetings that indicate in addition to classrooms, the parish needs multi-use facilities for large meetings, better youth facilities, and other rooms for various parish ministries. We’ve hired a local architectural firm to develop a master site plan to incorporate these needs, and have just recently paid off the debt for our Church, built five years ago. Now, with Archbishop Lipscomb’s decision confirmed, we can proceed in finishing the site plan and decide on a time line for the construction of each phase.”
It will be the first new Catholic school in our diocese since St. Patrick’s in Robertsdale opened in the late 1970’s and the first ever regional elementary school Catholic school built to serve our diocese.
