Reply to Trying to decide between OLGC and St. Mark Catholic schools in Vienna

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think both of these schools are great. You can't go wrong. [b][b]The OLGC principal one year in the past 10 I think was fired [/b]and the new principal is more popular. You never know who the principal or teachers are going to be. Some are great and some can be problematic. They have an impact, but the curriculum and families remain pretty consistent from year to year. The parents and kids are very similar from one school to another. School start times are slightly different and school class sizes are slightly different, but the experience is similar. If you are interested in a catholic education, a strong academic foundation and extracurricular foundation, each of these schools will be solid. I do think the diocesan schools are a little stricter but in a good way. They have some oversight. Still OLGC has been around a long time and both of them were very popular choices during the pandemic and many families decided to stay. OLGC might feed more into O'Connell and Gonzaga and St. Mark a balance between O'Connell and Paul XI. I am not certain of this. You could ask where kids move on after graduation. Many return to public school for high school too.[/quote]

She was not fired! She was beloved but moved to a different state. New principal is great too. Very warm, awesome energy! [/quote]

She did not move to a different state. There actually have been three principals in the last 10 years. The first retired after not really meshing with the new pastor who came in and wanted the school to be more innovative and not just keep doing the same thing. The second was amazing and implemented a lot of programs to make the school more inclusive and to teach all types of students with new resource programs for those who needed and advanced opportunities for those who needed challenges. She created an academic student center.  She managed during COVID to make the school successfully teach both in person and online at same time.  She ran the school very efficiently but wasn't the warm fuzzy type.  She had a long commute, though, and when her son went off to high school closer to their home, she left to be a principal at a school closer to home.  The current principal, who has been in the job two years, really cares about the school and the parish and has been a long-time member of both. She is different than the last principal and has a cheerleader mentality and often wants to pray about problems. She is trying. Unfortunately, some of the advances have stalled or not continued. The population has also changed post-covid with more privilege/country club types and more bullying being left unaddressed.  Lots of great families have left or considered leading so only time will tell where it goes.[/quote]

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