RealAudio

	St. Peter Claver School will reopen this week with classes for preschool through third grade. In coming years, the school will eventually add fourth through eighth grades. Tuition is $2,900, but most of the students are eligible for some financial help. Fewer than half of the students are Catholic.

St. Peter Claver School will reopen this week with classes for preschool through third grade. In coming years, the school will eventually add fourth through eighth grades. Tuition is $2,900, but most of the students are eligible for some financial help. Fewer than half of the students are Catholic.

Sharon Glover, the school's new principal, says students will study in highly structured classrooms. "We will not have the problem of test scores and all the other things that we hear about children of color, and particularly African Americans, because our kids with the right teachers, the right curriculum, can be at the top and they will be," she predicts.

Catholic educators say the increasing demand for rigorous academics and faith-based learning has filled many Twin Cities area classrooms to capacity. Holy Family Church in St. Louis Park is also reopening a school that was closed as part of a merger in the late 1980s. Last year, new Catholic schools opened in Eagan, Minneapolis, Victoria, Woodbury.

Tom McCarver, director of education for the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, says total enrollment has reached 37,000 and should keep growing. "As schools come back, the populations in the parishes are growing pretty strongly right now. So, this is still not a blip on the screen. It's something that's going to be here for some time," according to McCarver.

	Headmaster Todd Flanders says Providence Academy was modeled after the Sir Christopher Wren Building at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "The idea of the building is to represent symmetry, order, beauty, nobility," he says.

The exclusive college preparatory school will open with 185 students in kindergarten through 9th grade, and expand to 12th grade by 2004. Tuition ranges from $8,700 to $9,400.

Flanders says the school was founded on traditional educational values. "What we've tried to do here is bring together educational elements that have proven very effective for the past 100 years, focusing on core curriculum, focusing on good religious education, trying to instill a sense of moral values in young people," Flanders says.

The visionary behind Providence Academy is Robert Cummins, CEO of Primera Technology Inc., who also wrote a check for most of the $20-million project. Cummins declined requests for an interview.

Tom McCarver of the Archdiocese says the school and its benefactor are unique because "we have rarely had the kinds of gifts that Mr. Cummins and his family have brought to this effort. And the fact that he has shared his good fortune with all of his friends is going to be an underpinning of this school that will last forever."

The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis is projecting total K-12 enrollment to reach 45,000 students in the next seven years. McCarver says two more urban schools could reopen next fall, and discussions are underway to build new elementary and secondary schools in the north and southeastern sections of the metro area.