St. Viator High School is a
Roman Catholic co-educational secondary school in
Arlington Heights,
Illinois. It serves as a college preparatory school with approximately eleven-hundred students from the mid- and outer-northwest suburbs of
Chicago. Part of the
Archdiocese of Chicago, the school is run by the
Clerics of Saint Viator.
History
The
Archdiocese of Chicago reallocated some land it had already owned — tentatively designated for a future cemetery — for educational purposes, and assigned the
Clerics of St. Viator to build and run a boys'
secondary school. It opened in 1961 to a small class of
freshmen and a few
sophomores, graduating its first class in 1965.
Enrollments waxed and waned over the next few decades. Faced with declining numbers in 1987, the choice was made to merge with
Sacred Heart of Mary High School of
Rolling Meadows, with which St. Viator already had a sister-school relationship. The merger was effected in the summer of 1987; St. Viator absorbed the faculty, staff, and student body of Sacred Heart beginning with the 1987–88 school year, and admitted a co-educational freshman class (the class of 1991).
The physical plant remained largely unchanged from its original 1961 footprint. A co—educational student population required the construction of a girls'
locker room. This kicked off a string of renovations to occur throughout the 1990s, including a...
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