One hundred years and counting.
Sacred Heart School on Bayview Avenue near Martin Luther King Drive has been on a mission to educate young minds for just over a century and is showing no signs of slowing down.
The only elementary school in the Archdiocese of Newark that receives no support from a parish, Sacred Heart has a current pre-K to grade 8 enrollment of 213 students, who are overwhelmingly non-Catholic and poor.
Seventy-four percent of the students qualify for the free or reduced price lunch program and 59 percent receive scholarships to help pay tuition. Some 62 percent of the students come from single-parent households.
But the statistic that Sister Frances Salemi, principal of the school, is most proud of is nearly 100 percent of her students graduate from high school, and most move on to college. It's a number that other schools in Greenville would envy.
"We take each child as they come in," Salemi said. "You don't expect every child to go to college, but if they have the basics of reading, writing, and math, and they are good productive Christian people, we've done our job."
The school is housed in an immaculately kept three-story building at the corner of Bayview Avenue and the Drive.
The alma mater of actor Nathan Lane and Giants defensive end Robert Ayers, Sacred Heart was launched at a time when Jackson Avenue — the name of the Drive prior to 1976 — was flourishing.
There were butcher shops, five and dimes, hair salons, fabric shops, live poultry stores, hardware stores and taverns. The Sisters of Charity started the school to cater to the children of the new immigrants, the Irish and Italian.
The Greenville school is now in the heart of a poor, predominantly African-American neighborhood.
Many of the students have had tough upbringings, said Salemi and Rosemary Sekel, the school's full-time fundraiser. Two boys who attended the school saw their mother sent to prison for shooting their father's girlfriend. The father, a known drug dealer, was gunned down last year in his wheelchair.
Sacred Heart School in Jersey City celebrated its 100th anniversary this year.
"We tell them (our students), leave the streets at the door," Salemi said.
Besides, they all know, "You don't mess with Sister Frances," added Sekel.
"Whether it's new families to the neighborhood or the families who have sent their children to Sacred Heart for generations, our mission remains unchanged: to educate their hearts, minds, and souls," Sekel said.
Noting the school's breakfast, lunch, and after-school programs, she added: "It's all about adjusting to the needs of the children."
For most of the school's existence, there was no tuition charged. The now-closed parish supported the school and Sisters of Charity nuns taught for free. Now, only four of the school's 22 full-time staff members are nuns, and the parish, which closed in 2005 due to dwindling membership, has vanished as a source of financial support.
The cost to educate a student for a year is $6,000, Salemi said. But the school charges $3,400 to keep the cost relatively affordable for families in the neighborhood, she said.
The school is heavily reliant on fundraising, donations and volunteers.
Three times a week, 10 volunteers from Wyckoff teach computers, art, and music at the school. This group has been volunteering for 15 years, and they also raise $60,000 a year for the school, Sekel said.
Meanwhile, if Sacred Heart could capture just a drop of the wealth raining down on the waterfront, the school would be in good shape, Salemi said.
"When you look at Downtown and you look here, it looks like two different cities," she said. "It would be nice if some of the developers would take an interest in Sacred Heart."
Editor's Note:
This is part of a six-day, 12-article series about Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City and the neighborhood around it. It is the result of dozens of interviews with community leaders, local residents, clergy, professors, local business owners, nonprofit builders, and city and school officials.
This series is mostly about the people who are working to revitalize this once-thriving community, a neighborhood many grew up in and care about deeply.