St. Leo the Great School

St. Leo the Great School is a private Catholic Pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade school serving Silicon Valley. It is associated with Saint Leo the Great Parish and located in the St Leo section of the Shasta-Hanchett neighborhood in San Jose. The school was founded in 1915. The campus consists of five buildings and three play areas.HistorySt. Leo the Great School was originally begun by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur of Amiens, France and opened in 1915 with 90 students. Tuition was $2 a year. The original school building is still used today as the PreKindergarten, gym, parish hall and kitchen. In 1919 the Sisters of Notre Dame were supervising four schools, the others being St Joseph, St Francis Xavier, and St Mary.In 1925 the Sisters of Notre Dame closed the school; there were then eight grades and 200 students.In 1927 the Reverend Henry J. Lyne reopened the school with the support of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.St Leo students won the Bellarmine College Preparatory four-year scholarship in 1937 (Franklin Lawrence) 1938 (Dick Wehner), 1939 (Robert Wehner), 1940 (Louis Mattiesen), and 1940 (Walter E. Rankin, Jr; the third consecutive year a St Leo student scored top marks on the exam).A new school building was built in 1950 to accommodate the school's 445 students, and the original building was converted into a gym.