Marmion Academy in Aurora, Illinois to go co-ed
AURORA, Ill. (CBS) -- The all-boys Marmion Academy in Aurora announced Tuesday that it is going co-ed.
The Catholic college-prep high school in the Fox Valley has been an all-boys institution since it was founded in 1933.
School leaders announced Tuesday that the school will welcome girls as early as the fall of 2026. The Marmion Abbey of chapter of monks voted to make the change this past weekend.
"Throughout our long history, Marmion Academy has implemented changes in its structure, while remaining true to our values of academic achievement, spiritual formation, and character development for our students," Abbot Joel Rippinger, OSB, said in a news release. "After a year of intense study, discernment and prayerful reflection, we've determined that it was the right time to make this change. Our values, rooted in the Catholic Benedictine tradition, will remain at the heart of our mission."
The plan calls not for co-ed classes throughout all students' four years of high school, but for boys and girls to attend single-gender classes as freshmen and sophomores, then co-ed classes as juniors and seniors.
The school said the co-ed setting will better prepare students for life in a "diverse, interconnected world" after graduation.
Over the past 50 years, numerous previously all-boys Catholic high schools in the Chicago area have gone coed—including St. Ignatius College Prep in 1979, St. Viator High School in 1987, Fenwick High School in 1992, Loyola Academy in 1994, and Marist High School in 2002.
But Chicago's Mount Carmel High School, after considering admitting girls beginning in the fall of 2023, remains all boys after the school's board rejected the proposal.
