On a late-summer morning, the seniors stream into Maria Regina High School in Hartsdale for orientation, their bright pink knee socks and backpacks indicative of their fourth-year status.
“Ladies, check the list for your homerooms, then proceed to the auditorium,” a member of the security team of active-duty and retired police officers announces.
Another school year and yet a year like no other as Maria Regina ”“ founded in 1957 by the Sisters of the Resurrection as the first all-girls, college-preparatory high school in Westchester County ”“ celebrates its 65th anniversary with an Oct. 22 open house and an Oct. 27 gala at the VIP Country Club in New Rochelle.
Why has Maria Regina lasted 65 years?
“I think something that makes the school special is the sense of community ”“ the faculty, staff, students, alumnae and parents,” says President Anna E. Parra, who with Principal Maria R. Carozza-McCaffrey forms Maria Regina”™s complementary leadership team, with Parra handling the fundraising and marketing and Carozza-McCaffrey the day-to-day operations. “Even as a new year begins, everyone transitions to a feeling of knowing one another.”
Parra notes that 20% of the 75-member faculty and staff are, like Carozza-McCaffrey (Class of 1999), alumnae. “It brings everything full circle,” she adds.
We are talking in the sunny courtyard of the school”™s 73,000-square-foot, mid-century modern building in the shadow of what will be the students”™ community garden, off the new handicap-accessible, state-of-the-art Eco-Conscious Environmental and Life Sciences Laboratory. Made possible by a $75,000 grant from The Thomas & Agnes Carvel Foundation in Yonkers ”“ the largest the school has ever received ”“ and a $25,000 one from the Charles A. Mastronardi Foundation in Wilmington, Delaware, the lab fulfills several objectives, Parra and Carozza-McCaffrey have said ”“ to align with student interests; to make science classes more accessible physically, as all the other science classrooms are on the second floor of the two-story building; and to give students an edge in the post-secondary landscape.
With that edge in mind, the school is also applying for Middle States Accreditation. (It already has accreditation from the New York State Board of Regents.) The process includes a schoolwide self-examination to assess strengths and needs. Among those needs on the 21-acre campus was an upgraded athletic field. On Aug. 14, Maria Regina broke ground on a $2 million turf field for soccer and softball that will debut next spring.
It’s all part of a holistic approach to education encapsulated in the school”™s mission statement, to create a place “where young women are encouraged to achieve academic excellence, empowered to be compassionate leaders and enriched with the Spirit to live a life of charity, truth and service to others.”
This spirit is exemplified in part by the school”™s groundbreaking marching band, which became the first all-girls ensemble to march in the St. Patrick”™s Day Parade in Manhattan this past March 17; and a community services requirement of 10 hours for freshman and sophomores each, 20 for juniors and 40 for seniors. (Maria Regina is also the first high school in the archdiocese to establish a Catholic Relief Services Club.)
Sometimes an opportunity for service will come out of suggestion by a member of the diverse body of 500 students, Parra says, half of whom come from public elementary schools, a statistic that is growing. Junior Sofia Mooney ”“ a student with achondroplasia, a type of dwarfism ”“ organized a day to bring awareness to the condition using educational announcements and asking the community to wear green to support the initiative, raising $700 in the process, Parra adds.
“We encourage our students to have a voice, to lead,” she says. But that voice has to have the same tone as classroom instruction ”“ “factual, honest, open and respectful.”
It is a tone set by the Sisters of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, founded in Rome in 1891 by Celine Borzecka, and daughter Hedwig ”“ the first time a mother and daughter had established an order in Catholic history. In 1957, Francis Cardinal Spellman, then archbishop of New York, asked the sisters to create the first Catholic girls school in Westchester. Two years later, the first freshman and sophomores entered the new building. In the meantime, however, classes were held in the convent, a house adjacent to the school that is used for administrative offices and retreats.
After a tour of the school, Parra ”“ who holds degrees from Fordham University and the now-defunct College of New Rochelle and had a long career in archdiocesan fundraising ”“ invites us to visit the convent, with its wood-paneled chapel. (There is a smaller chapel in the school.) Though the nuns stopped teaching at Maria Regina in 2019 ”“ they”™re now based in Castleton, New York ”“ the former convent still exudes an air of abbey-like serenity.
“We”™re carrying on their mission,” Parra says.
Yearly tuition at Maria Regina High School is $13,500. The open house takes place 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 22.
The 65th Anniversary Gala will be held at 6 p.m. Oct. 27 at the VIP Country Club in New Rochelle. Alumna Mary Calvi, the 12-time New York Emmy Award-winning journalist and author of the new “If A Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt”™s First Love,” will be the emcee. For more, click here. And for more on the school, visit mariaregina.org.
