Pope John XXIII High School is a Catholic school in unincorporated Harris County, Texas, United States. The school is part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, led by Archbishop Daniel DiNardo.
Pope John XXIII serves the west side of the Houston area in the Greater Katy Area. The school has a Katy address. The current principal is Tim Petersen.
Pope John XXIII High School is located on a 35-acre (140,000 m2) parcel of land. Twelve million dollars was raised to construct the campus buildings. The school was opened in 2004 with an inaugural freshman class of 40 students. Since then, each year has seen more students enrolling as the school added new classes and expanded into larger facilities. The current enrollment is 362 students and the school is preparing to continue expansion after the newly constructed Crosthwait Student Center and a Competition Gymnasium.
The school's mascot, nicknamed PJ, is the lion. The school offers 14 different athletic teams, including football, volleyball, boys and girls basketball, baseball, softball, swimming, tennis, boys and girls soccer, cross country, track and field, golf, and cheerleading. The women's swim team won the state title in TAPPS 4A in February 2012. The girl's soccer team won the state title championship in TAPPS 3A in 2010. The TAPPS 4A Men's Cross Country champion has been from Pope John XXIII High School in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years.
Upon admission, students are sorted into one of five houses, much like the Oxford colleges system. These houses are Aquinas, Borromeo, Lisieux, Loreto, and Neri. Each house has its own form of internal student government, senior house captains, and has faculty and staff associates who work with the members of their house. This house system is the first to be implemented in Catholic high schools in the state of Texas.
Famous quotes containing the words pope, john, high and/or school:
“On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Take heed of enemies reconciled, and of meat twice boiled.”
—Collected in John Ray, English Proverbs. English proverb (1670)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)