10/27/23 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Latin Capstone During Finals Week

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

I would like to report the statistics of our students at Our Lady of Peace School for the 2023-2024 school year so that all of us are informed about who is here in our wonderful school!

Our official enrollment as of today is 252 students. In the seven years that I have been here enrollment has been fairly steady with a low of 210 students in 2020 to a previous high of 225 in 2017. Last year we had 222 students in attendance, so this year is a big leap for us.

Certainly, much of our growth can be attributed to the wonderful new students we have that previously attended St. Anthony but we also have full Kindergarten classes totaling 25 students.

My guess is that this is not the biggest year of enrollment in our history. I had thought perhaps that this year’s total of 42 eighth graders was the biggest ever in that class, but the class of 1965 still holds the record with 45!

Girls slightly outpace the boys 132-120, which overall is nicely balanced.



With regards to ethnicity the breakdown is as follows:

Caucasian students: 69%

African American: 19%

Multi-Racial 9%

Asian 2%

Hispanic 1%

73% of our students are Catholic totaling 184 students. Of that number 148 are registered at Our Lady of Peace. With all the new students coming in this year, it seems that some families have not landed an official parish home. It should also be noted that some of our students who are first or second generation from Ghana attend Mass at St. Elizabeth which has a Mass for that community in Columbus. The number of Catholics in our school is an increase from last year.

I am also proud of the fact that in the last calendar year, six of our students officially entered the Catholic Church through baptism. We are truly evangelizing here at Our Lady of Peace.

I have previously kept statistics on students in our school receiving the EdChoice voucher, but the State of Ohio’s new budget allows almost every family in our school to receive some dollars from that program. Remember that we are not stealing any money from our public schools. These are your tax dollars going back to help educate your students.

9% of our students have a documented learning disability. This number will continue to rise as parents and teachers identify gaps between ability and achievement which is the definition of having abn academic disability. Through the use of the Jon Peterson and Autism scholarships as well as increasing our own staff we work hard to meet the needs of our students who learn differently. At the same time, we continue to address the needs of those students whose ability exceeds that of classmates. For a small school we do an admirable job of inclusion for each and every boy and girl who attends. Can we do better? Most certainly, but we have come a long way.

Beyond these statistics each one of our 252 students comes to our building each morning with unique gifts and needs, successes and challenges, family stability and instability, good health and physical limitations, confidences and anxieties.

The beauty of our school is that we know each of our students as unique children of God with worth in our school and in this world. Please join me in praying for them as they grow and learn.

Jim Silcott