Charleston Catholic High School is located in downtown Charleston, West Virginia

Charleston, West Virginia

Charleston is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in Kanawha County. As of the 2010 census, it has a population of 51,400, and its metropolitan area 304,214. It is the county seat of Kanawha County.Early...

, USA. CCHS is a Catholic

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

, coeducation

Coeducation

Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...

al high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 founded in 1923. It is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston

Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the southern United States comprising the state of West Virginia. It is a conjoined diocese with two centers of worship, one day expected to be split into two separate...

.

History

Sacred Heart Church, founded in 1815 by Zachary Bogan, established a parochial school as early as 1869. The parish conducted primary grades irregularly in the 19th century. In 1903, the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity, of Stella Niagara, New York, assumed administration of the school. In 1923, Sacred Heart added high school grades in the former Chilton house in downtown Charleston and named the institution Sacred Heart High School. In 1940, John J. Swint, the bishop of the former Diocese of Wheeling, created Charleston Catholic High School. Area Catholics contributed to the construction of a three-story building, including science laboratories and a gymnasium, completed in 1941. Post-war growth of Charleston led to the expansion of the school and the addition of a third floor in the 1950s. Enrollment peaked in the late 1960s and then began a slow decline in the mid-1980s. In 1986, Monsignor P. Edward Sadie, a local priest, hired Debra K. Sullivan as the principal.

Enrollment

Charleston Catholic enrolls both Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 and non-Christian students from a wide range of ethnic, racial, and socio-economic backgrounds. Students are required to follow a uniform policy. CCHS boasts a rigorous college preparatory program for all students with an extensive offering of academic, athletic, and extracurricular programs. Its athletic teams compete with public and parochial schools in the WVSSAC

West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission

The West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission is the main governing body of high school sports, cheerleading, and marching bands in West Virginia. Schools are divided into three classes by total enrollment in grades 9-11 only: A , AA , and AAA ...

Division A. Typically, 100 percent of graduating classes enroll in four-year colleges and universities.

Awards and recognition

Charleston Catholic High School was named the top athletics program in West Virginia for 2008-2009 school year by Sports Illustrated.

Class of 2009

Members of the Charleston Catholic High School Class of 2009 were accepted and enrolled in some of the country's finest universities (including Washington University in Saint Louis, Princeton University, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), had eight national merit finalists in a graduating class of only 69, and were ACRE champions. 38% of the graduating class were honored as AP scholars.