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:
“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I’m not making light of prayers here, but of so-called school prayer, which bears as much resemblance to real spiritual experience as that freeze-dried astronaut food bears to a nice standing rib roast. From what I remember of praying in school, it was almost an insult to God, a rote exercise in moving your mouth while daydreaming or checking out the cutest boy in the seventh grade that was a far, far cry from soul-searching.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)