John Paul II Academy

The Czechs, being recent immigrants, had difficulty with a language barrier, so in 1895 the Milwaukee Archbishop Frederick Xavier Katzer took it upon himself to help them establish their own parish and new church; St. John Nepomuk was blessed in 1896. In the early 1900’s, plans were made for a parochial school, and St. John Nepomuk’s new parish school opened in September 1906. It consisted of two classrooms with two Racine Dominicans running the school. In 1917, the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee were assigned to the school. St. John Nepomuk School celebrated its 100-year anniversary of providing a quality Catholic education in 2006.

Around the same time in Racine’s history, when the need for a new parish was envisioned, what originally began as a gathering of Italian immigrants in a basement chapel, flourished into the Sacred Heart Congregation. In 1916, construction of a combined church-school building began and was dedicated in August of the same year. Two Racine Dominicans ran the school, commuting back and forth from the convent each day. As both parish and school communities grew, a home from the Sisters’ was purchased and moved into in 1922, with a new church under construction in 1925.  The Harvey School to the north of the parish was purchased in 1937 to use for the growing school population. The corner stone of the current school building was laid in 1957, with building completion and dedication the following year.

In 2007, St. John Nepomuk and Sacred Heart joined to become a single school, taking on the name John Paul II Academy. Since that time, the school has provided a faith-based education that embraces the teachings of the Gospel.