When they had the ribbon-cutting for the new Loyola School, I noticed that Father Bill Watters stood in the background as another Jesuit priest, the Rev. Mario M. Powell, cut the ribbon with oversized scissors. “Deferred to the boss,” Watters said later, referring to Powell’s superior position as provincial assistant for pre-secondary and secondary education for the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus.
But it would not have been like Father Bill to insist on cutting the ribbon for the Jesuit elementary school in Mount Vernon, even though he’s the one who established it several years ago with the help of donors who believed in the mission: Opening a new school for some of Baltimore’s poorest children and providing full scholarships for each of them.
The Loyola School is the third for children from low-income families that Watters founded.
He’s lived a busy 92 years, the last 30 of them devoted to spreading the centuries-old Jesuit tradition of education in Baltimore. I think of it as the Father Bill Project. It has reached legendary status.
In the early 1990s, when Watters was in his 60s and newly instated as pastor of St. Ignatius Church, he established St. Ignatius Loyola Academy as a middle school for boys, with the challenge of preparing them for success in high school and college. Housed in a space adjoining the church on North Calvert Street, next to Center Stage, the school started with 20 sixth-graders, all on scholarships.
Some 20 years later, with enrollment growing and grades being added, the academy moved to Federal Hill, in the old St. Mary Star of the Sea school building at East Gittings Street and Battery Avenue. The academy now has 116 students in grades five through eight, and counts 665 graduates since 1993.
Meanwhile, the Father Bill Project took on the need for a high school. Watters led the development of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School for boys and girls in the former Our Lady of the Rosary High School on South Chester Street in Fells Point.
The school opened in 2007, with a model that combines four years of college preparatory education with four years of professional work experience through internships. Cristo Rey now has 355 students in grades nine through 12, and boasts a high college acceptance rate.
Watters’ latest project, The Loyola School, started off as a preschool called the Loyola Early Learning Center, at Madison and St. Paul streets. It was believed to be the first venture into preschool among the many Jesuit institutions throughout the country.
When I visited the place, in 2019, there were 56 impossibly cute kids there, and Watters was already talking about expanding the center to serve children up to fourth grade.
That followed, and the little school grew. More space was needed.
Watters again had his eye on acquiring shuttered, church-affiliated properties, which is another positive aspect of the Father Bill Project, the repurposing of historic buildings.
We discussed an empty Mount Vernon mansion — the former headquarters of the Society of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, or the Josephite Fathers. Watters told me he would need about $6 million to acquire that building and turn it into an elementary school.
That didn’t happen, and Watters looked elsewhere: The school at Grace and St. Peter’s Church on Park Avenue, closed during the pandemic; a large house on the grounds of a church in Federal Hill; a Methodist church that had closed, an Episcopal church that had closed.
He then set his sights on five rowhouses in the 100 block of East Madison Street, close to St. Ignatius Church, and donated by the St. Ignatius Historic Trust. The proposal to turn the 19th Century houses into the newly-named Loyola School by demolishing the back half of those properties, while keeping their classic fronts, prompted pushback from some preservationists. Ed Gunts of Baltimore Fishbowl reported on the opposition to the project.
But it won approvals and got underway, at a final cost of $9.6 million. “The construction actually took 5 years and 8 months before we moved in last week,” Watters says.
Today, while walking along East Madison Street, it’s hard to tell there’s a school with 145 kids behind the three-story walls. The entrance to The Loyola School is on North Calvert Street. That’s where the ribbon cutting took place, with children in fresh school uniforms, parents, teachers and supporters of the school cheering from the sidewalk.
It’s hoped that The Loyola School will grow from 145 to 200 students in the next two years.
When I offered some words of praise for all his efforts, Watters responded by expressing admiration for the teachers who’ve made the commitment to the children in each school.
I asked where the money comes from — not just for the acquisition and renovation of buildings, but all those scholarships. The annual per-student cost in the elementary school is $17,500. (The average annual income for a Loyola School family is about $35,000.)
“Financial support of the students at all three schools comes from many sources,” Watters said, listing “a large number of friends of the Jesuits, parishioners of St. Ignatius Church, graduates of Loyola Blakefield [high school] and Loyola University [of Maryland], wealthy people, middle class and ordinary folks, and a number of foundations of our city, and, of course, very much from the Society of Jesus.”
People who visit the new school, he says, have a hard time saying no to appeals for a donation “once they see the children.”
Yes, the children and young adults: Soon there will be nearly 700 of them, ages 2 to 18, in the three schools that resulted from the Father Bill Project. That’s a magnificent legacy.
Dan Rodricks writes a weekly column for The Fishbowl. He can be contacted at djrodricks@gmail.com or via danrodricks.com
This is good news