The San Miguel School of Providence: A History   

I often recall one of the founding acts of the Miguel School movement in the United States.  Sitting in chairs intended for kindergarten students around a table of similar proportions, I remember meeting with a parent and her son at what was once St. Paul’s Lutheran Day School and would soon be The San Miguel School of Providence.  I reassured them that the student desks, which would be delivered soon, would be more appropriate for middle school students, and that the textbooks would be arriving with the desks.  I asked them to picture a computer on the empty table in the classroom and said that a student handbook would be available within the first weeks of school.  The smell of paint still fresh, I introduced them to Licia Koch and Mariesa Jozwiak, our first two Lasallian Volunteers and recent college graduates, who would be the fifth and sixth grade teachers.  Perhaps in other neighborhoods the parent would have smiled politely and enrolled her son elsewhere, but in this neighborhood, where educational opportunity is scarce, the parent and her son became one of the pioneering students and first families of The San Miguel School.

Our school grew slowly over the next couple of years with the addition of a seventh grade in 1994 and an eighth grade in 1995.  In two years the school grew from fourteen boys to forty-five.  It took a couple more years for the school to reach its maximum enrollment of sixty-four middle school boys.  During those first few years the school was a bare bones operation: a slightly longer day than other city schools, but there was no after school program in place and summer camps did not begin until 1996.  Indeed, the school had only one computer during its first three years!

Although a Board of Directors was in place at the school’s beginning, it was composed of about six members who met frequently but followed no regular agenda, took no minutes and looked no further than when the next meeting would be held.  Discussions were usually limited to fundraising and development concerns since there was a serious lack of basic funds to operate the school.  The school’s budget grew from $50,000 the first year to $87,000 in year two.  During the 1995-6 school year the budget skyrocketed to over $150,000 with the addition of the eighth grade, the after school program and Camp Miguel.  There was still no school secretary and the position of Director of Development was still several years away.  The greatest single gift to our small school during its infancy was the rent-free use of St. Paul’s former school building.  The Lutheran Parish also charged no fee for utilities during our first couple of years.  Without the generosity of St. Paul’s parishioners it is doubtful that the school would have made it past year three.

What began as a lone school in one of Providence’s poorest neighborhoods grew into the national Miguel Schools Network, a wave of fifteen new schools established by the De La Salle Christian Brothers to specifically address the needs of students from economically-poor communities.  A Miguel School is defined as a small, Lasallian elementary or middle school that is not tuition-driven and serves students and families from all faiths and cultures.  Almost all our students are considered at-risk due to the voids and pressures associated with low-income neighborhoods, and some students may already be struggling with the effects of the environment.

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