Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 19, 2025 /
09:36 am
Demand among Catholic families in northern Virginia has spurred the leadership of the St. Jerome Institute, a classical liberal arts high school in Washington, D.C., to open a second campus in the Diocese of Arlington.
The opening of the new school comes six years after the institute first launched in the nation’s capital, where enrollment has grown from three to 65 students. The school operates independently with an education plan developed by its own curriculum board.
“We see that one of the great problems in American culture is the fragmentation between faith and reason,” Andrew Shivone, president of the St. Jerome Institute (SJI), told CNA regarding the school’s mission. “What we want to do is structure our curriculum, structure our culture, structure even the common life that we live together in the truth of Christ and have that truth ordering everything else that we do at the school.”
Students at St. Jerome’s participate in small seminar-style classes, engaging with the school’s unique liberal arts curriculum.
“From the epic tales of Odysseus and Beowulf to the quiet heroism of Walter Ciszek in Soviet Russia, from the deceptive simplicity of counting to the surprising complexity of the natural logarithm, SJI presents the inspiring beauty of our world in ways that lead students to deeper understanding and lifelong mastery,” the school’s website states.
Students at the St. Jerome Institute experience a tight-knit and active community, whether it be through their seminar discussions, communal morning prayer, extracurricular activities, or rigorous observance of feast days on the liturgical calendar.
“There are a lot of really good Catholic schools in the Arlington Diocese,” Shivone emphasized. “But for those families who are particularly interested in a Catholic liberal arts education, we fit that niche.”
Much like the founding of the original school, the St. Jerome Institute’s decision to launch its second location in northern Virginia comes at the request of local Catholic parents.
“The northern Virginia Catholic community already possesses a beautiful parish life and really beautiful, authentic Catholic communities of parents, priests, and … kids,” Shivone said. “This seems to be a perfect addition to a community that already exists.”
A curriculum modeled after classical ‘innovation’
Faculty at the St. Jerome Institute will meet this week for their annual summer curriculum symposium, Shivone told CNA. There, teachers will work with the school’s curriculum board to review what works “and seek even deeper integration, philosophically and theologically, with all of the subjects.”
Integration, Shivone noted, is key to the school’s curriculum model.
“We aspire to cultivate and develop what is most human in our students precisely by incorporating them into the rich tradition of Catholic humanism,” the institute’s education plan states.
It continues: “This is their birthright as Catholics and children of the West. Included in this twofold integration are those aptitudes and attitudes belonging to a well-educated person, fully alive: the capacity for wonder, and the ability to read well, write well, speak well, and think well.”
Ultimately, the structure of the curriculum is modeled according to several themes, Shivone explained: God in nature, God in the person, and God in the community. Students end on a “major in-depth study of the Trinity.”
“It’s not simply that they’re able to translate Cicero or something like that, which is a good thing,” Shivone reflected. He said the institute typically interviews its students a few months after graduation, and what they most often report having retained from their experience is “the habit of wonder.”
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Vision for the new school
The new school’s curriculum will contain many of the same “essential” elements as the existing school, according to Shivone.
However, he said, “we want the new school to receive what we are, and then from that, develop it in freedom,” since the aim of the school is to pursue an “education in freedom.”
Its class sizes will be similar to the D.C. school, with 16 to 18 students in a section and two sections per class.
Shivone said he expects the new school to enroll “anywhere between 30 and 60 [ninth- and 10th-grade] students” this fall.
Ultimately, St. Jerome will cap its overall student population at 120 to 140 students in order to maintain the ideal class size for its seminar-style courses. If the demand for enrollment goes beyond that number, Shivone said the institute would consider the possibility of opening another school to accommodate.
“For us, a school is a community of people learning together,” he said. “And there is, just by necessity, a certain size to that. Once it gets larger, it ceases to be a community.”
Madalaine Elhabbal is a staff reporter for Catholic News Agency based at EWTN’s Washington, D.C., bureau.
