Sister John Francis Schilling proudly calls St. Frances Academy a second-chance school.
Some would call it a last-chance or a take-a-chance school.
Certainly, the tiny, urban, Roman Catholic high school has taken many chances that have paid off with students others wanted nothing to do with: youth from poor and troubled families, who have flunked out of public schools, who are street-smart, who have given up on themselves.
But St. Frances Academy -- at Chase Street and Brentwood Avenue near the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore -- is thriving.
In the past five years, it has doubled its enrollment to 260, gained local and national acclaim for its basketball teams and attracted nearly as much notice for sending 95 percent of its graduates to college and giving opportunities to kids who thought those came only on their neighborhood drug corners.
With full enrollment and a waiting list for ninth grade, St. Frances is undertaking a $10 million capital campaign for building improvements, tuition aid, salaries and a community center that would solidify its second mission -- to be a positive presence in the community of which it has been a part for more than 100 years.
"It's an extraordinary school," says Robert C. Embry Jr., president of the Abell Foundation, which pays the tuitions of several students there. "They are attuned to, and want, children who are struggling."
With the penitentiary near its back door and a barren, glass-strewn playground across from its front gate, St. Frances is a sanctuary in Johnston Square, just east of the Jones Falls Expressway. Inside its gate are swept walks and tidy gardens -- order, along with limits and expectations.
"We provide a structured environment for some students who don't have a structure at home," says Sister John Francis, who has been the coeducational school's president and principal for six years. "There's a great need to deal especially with young people who have troubled situations."
Started in 1828 by Mary Elizabeth Lange, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence the next year, the school opened as a place to teach the children of slaves to read -- then an illegal activity.
Now, St. Frances is the country's oldest Catholic high school with African-American roots. It is Baltimore's oldest Catholic high school, says Tom Nealis, its director of development.
