Dear Holy Cross Academy Family,

As I happily begin my third year as principal of this wonderful community, it gives me much pleasure looking at the many accomplishments of our students seeing our Model UN Team excel at the CBA Conference, celebrating our Boys’ Soccer team’s first place finish in the MCISSL Liberty Conference, collecting food and coats for the needy, hearing the poignant talks given to our children by Father Manning at Mass, or enjoying our brilliant school-wide Christmas Concert, I am reminded daily of the wealth of talent in our community and the blessings we enjoy as members of this remarkable school.
 
My goal in my first two years as principal was to learn the culture of this richly textured place, and all my interactions with the students, faculty, parents and alumni have confirmed my belief in the enduring resonance of our school’s mission and the transformative impact of a Holy Cross education.  Time and again, I find myself in a conversation with a graduate of the school – whether age seventeen or age eighty-seven – and the same essential theme emerges:  Holy Cross does more than deliver a rigorous academic program.  It forms and changes lives.
 
I have seen this transformation at work in the sincerity with which our students serve and pray at Mass; in the warmth, joy and love that radiate from our classrooms from pre-school through eighth grade; in the devotion our faculty bring to their work every day; and in the kindness our students show for one another.
 
However, as recent events remind us, we live in complicated and confusing times, as forces in the broader culture raise new questions and new challenges that all schools will face in the coming years. Here at Holy Cross Academy, we seek each day to stay focused on our mission to become a more perfect embodiment of the ideals we profess: faith, knowledge, and character, with Christ’s teachings as our guide.
 
We are all works in progress:  fallible, human, often falling short of the ideas to which we aspire.  And, so it is with the mission of our great school, we seek each day to become a more perfect embodiment of the ideals we profess at Holy Cross Academy.
 
It has been an autumn of change for me, as I begin a chapter of my professional life during my third year at Holy Cross Academy and feel my own story ever more connected to the story of this luminous institution.  It feels in many ways like a season of transition for our great school as well.  Just as Holy Cross Academy transforms the lives of our children, perhaps the greatest Holy Cross tradition is the school’s capacity to renew and transform itself, ensuring that its mission continues to speak powerfully to new questions and new realities.
 
Thank you for your prayers and support as we begin this important work together.
 
Sincerely,
Dr. Mark DeMareo
Principal