St. Joseph Academy will hold a Community Open House to showcase its new $3.7 million school addition on Thursday, September 17, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Located at 1600 W. Oklahoma Avenue on Milwaukee’s south side, the faith-based educational organization is home to an elementary school and an early childhood education center. And from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. on September 19 and 20, St. Joseph Academy will take part in Doors Open Milwaukee, a highly-popular annual event sponsored by Historic Milwaukee. As a first-time Doors Open site, the organization will provide complimentary guided tours of its building and highlight St. Joseph’s extraordinary evolution from an orphanage in 1907 to a child development center in the 1960s now coupled with a growing Milwaukee Parental Choice School.

“Our additional space – including extra classrooms, a community room, library and gym – opens a myriad of opportunities to collaborate on serving children and families,” said Lyn Hildenbrand, the organization’s newly-appointed President/CEO. “We invite one and all to see our transformation, and to celebrate the vision of our sponsoring group, the Felician Sisters, whose humble roots in Milwaukee date back to the turn of the last century.”

Newly-appointed School Principal Ben Holzem likewise lauded the new possibilities afforded by the building expansion.

“Our mission is to educate children to be successful life-long learners and problem solvers,” noted Holzem. “The school’s new addition allows us to do more for more kids and their families.”

“Many thanks to our capital campaign donors to date for their support, and to all those who participated in our record-setting Golf Outing last month, and our first-ever Calcutta Raffle last week,” added Hildenbrand.

Light refreshments will be served at both the Community Open House on September 17, and at the Doors Open events on September 19 and 20. Guided tours will be held every 30 minutes from start to finish. A free throw shooting contest will be held in the gym for Doors Open. All events are free of charge and open to the general public. The facility is handicapped-accessible. Ample free on-street parking is available.

St. Joseph Academy’s sponsoring organization, the Felician Sisters, is a champion of compassionate care for the Milwaukee community since 1907. The Sisters first created an orphanage to house children whose parents were deceased or needed childcare while their parents worked, just as the first Sisters in Poland ministered to orphans in Warsaw. When the number of working families grew in the 1960s, the Sisters opened a daycare center and closed the orphanage. In 1999, we moved to our current site, formerly St. Gerard’s Parish and School, built in 1926, and expanded our services to include infants. Today, we provide exemplary care and education for children from the age of six weeks through the fifth grade, and collaborate with others to educate children to be successful life-long learners and problem solvers. All of our actions are guided by the following core values: respect for human dignity, compassion, transformation, solidarity with the poor, and justice and peace.