A full curriculum, taught by certified teachers who know your child by name.
Holy Spirit School offers a comprehensive curriculum and is AdvancED® accredited — the agency the U.S. Department of Education recognizes to evaluate the ongoing quality of a school’s education. Every one of our teachers is fully certified by the State of New Jersey. Religion is a subject here, and it is also the reason the rest of the day is arranged the way it is.
“Differentiation is not a program here. It is what a small class makes possible.”
Religion, mathematics, language arts, and the habit of doing hard things well.
The core is deliberately traditional: reading real literature, writing by hand, learning vocabulary on purpose, and finishing Grade 8 having already sat through a year of algebra.
Physical education, health, art, music and Spanish are not electives here. Every child takes all five.
One curriculum, taught at the pace each child actually reads and reasons at.
Holy Spirit strives to meet the needs of each student through careful and appropriate differentiation of instruction in mathematics and the language arts. In a class this size, the teacher knows by October who needs the harder book and who needs another week.
Groups and assignments are adjusted within the class, so a child who is ahead is stretched and a child who is behind is not left there.
Devices are used throughout the day alongside our computer lab. Every classroom has a SmartBoard, and Grades 4–8 work in Google Classroom.
Books within arm’s reach in every classroom, because the surest way to raise a reader is to leave good books lying around.
Eleven years, and the teachers still remember the PreK photograph.
Holy Spirit School serves students in PreK–3, PreK–4, and Kindergarten through Grade 8 — one building, one faculty, and a curriculum that hands off cleanly from one year to the next.
Preschool
Age 3 & 4Letters, numbers, and prayers learned out loud together. Half day and full day options, with child care before and after class.
Elementary
K – Grade 5The core subjects with a homeroom teacher who sees the whole child, plus art, music, Spanish, health and physical education on rotation.
Middle school
Grades 6 – 8Subject teachers, algebra, the Science Symposium, Google Classroom, and enough responsibility to be ready for a Catholic high school.
Academic clubs, run by the teachers your child already has.
Every club is moderated by a member of our own faculty, and there is room for any child who wants a place.
National Junior Honor Society
Invitation at the end of Grade 6 to students with a 95% cumulative average, a clean record, and ten hours of service to the school.
Student Government
Four elected officers and a representative from every class, with elections in the fall and service drives such as Grains of Hope.
The Paraclete
Our quarterly newspaper. Students write the content, run the polls, cover the games, and lay out the pages themselves.
Photography Club
Composition, editing, portraits and landscape, every other Tuesday. Cameras are provided; fifteen places.
Small school, and our students still bring home the trophies.
Our eighth graders leave for the Catholic and public high schools around us prepared, and a good number of them leave with a medal from a competition they entered against much larger schools.
School news →Religion is on the timetable. The church is next door.
Religion is taught as a core subject in every grade, and the school day is built around it. Morning prayers begin at 8:10, the school walks over for Mass on Friday, and classes take their turn at Adoration on Tuesday. Holy Spirit Parish offers daily Mass at 8:30 every weekday morning at the church at 318 Newark‑Pompton Turnpike, so a parent can drop a child at 8:00 and be in a pew by 8:30.