Our History

A Brief History of St. Monica Academy
Celebrating 25 Years of Excellence

The story of St. Monica Academy began in 2000, when Jeff and Erin Talbot and Ed and Terese Laurance met in the living room of Louis and Judy Gutierrez. Each of these families had found sufficient ways to educate their children at the elementary level – in the parochial school or home schooling – but heard a clarion call to seek a better way to fulfill their mandate as primary educators of their children. 

They imagined an authentically Catholic school faithful to the Magisterium, that would hire faith-filled teachers to model excellent virtue formation, that would present a historically accurate understanding of the central role that the Catholic Church held in Western Civilization, and that would teach American exceptionalism. 

They imagined a school where faithful Catholic parents would be recognized and appreciated as the primary educators of their children, partnering with faculty and staff to offer their children the beauty and splendor of an authentic Catholic education.  

They imagined a school that sought to form saints and they developed a Code of Conduct that would provide students with the moral navigation to grow in virtue and practice, and guide them to sanctity. 

And so, they put the word out: was anyone interested in starting a new school?

The challenges seemed insurmountable given the abundance of Catholic schools in the San Gabriel valley area, the costs for a start-up school, and the difficulty of selling the idea of an alternative, untested, and unaccredited school to parents. But the sustaining force to preserve in their “imagined” school was driven by numerous hours before the Blessed Sacrament and a total submission to doing God’s will. 

Groups of parents met several times in their homes, sharing information gleaned from people who had started schools in other parts of the country. The advice was to begin with an elementary school and grow a high school organically from its families. So that became the plan. 

At one stage, the children likely to enroll were counted, and the resulting tuition revenue was compared with the estimated costs – and it was realized that there wouldn’t be enough income to cover facilities rental and salary for a headmaster and three teachers. Some concluded that a school would be financially out of reach. There were many times when the temptation to abandon the dream was strong, the task too daunting, the obstacles overwhelming. But each step of the planning was met with answered prayer and consolations to persevere, even if those consolations came only in the form of watching their children play at Park Day and wonder at their future.

Fortunately for all who now reap the benefits of St. Monica Academy, Jeff Talbot did not give up the dream. In the Spring of 2001, he and Alex Lessard identified an “angel investor” who provided the headmaster’s first year’s salary. With that came naming rights, and since the donor had ties to St. Augustine Academy in Ventura County, “St. Monica Academy” was christened before it was even born. It became clear that the Holy Spirit was at work and willed this school into existence for the benefit of families for decades to come.

Through St. Monica Academy’s long-time choir director, Mr. Stephen Grimm, the newly renovated Neighborhood Church compound was identified as an affordable, bucolic campus that was freeway-close and centrally located in Pasadena – a true godsend. Mr. David Burroughs agreed to become the headmaster, and the first teachers were hired: Miss Alison Smith for grades 2/3, Mr. Mario Landeros for grades 4/5, Mr. Michael Grumbine for grades 6/7, and Mrs. Alma Cornejo for Math. A Board of Directors was formed and the legalities were accomplished through the generous efforts of Louis Gutierrez, esq. 

The curriculum drew upon the knowledge and experience of parents who had successfully homeschooled for years. Uniforms and our Morning Assembly were modeled after Sts. Felicitas and Perpetua school, from which many families had come.  

Consonant with the heritage of St. Monica Academy’s sister school in Ventura, the educational model chosen in the first years was a return to the richness of classical Catholic education, upon which so much of Western civilization had been built.  Nourished by the Faith, St. Monica Academy was designed to have children learn to be free and critical thinkers in every subject through the pillars of the classical Trivium: Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric.  

Doors opened for the first day on September 5^th, 2001, with 44 students in grades 2-7 from 25 families. At the very first morning assembly, to rally enthusiasm Mr. Burroughs sent the students to their classrooms with the exhortation, “Go and be excellent today!” Thus a tradition was born. Word-of-mouth (and a glowing feature story in the Pasadena Star News) promoted new enrollments, reaching a total that first semester of 53 students and 31 families.

In its second year, St. Monica Academy added a first grade and expanded into high school, bringing on two outstanding new teachers: Miss Mary Kate Zepeda and Mr. Darren Bradley. In 2006, St. Monica Academy held the school’s first high school graduation. 

The inaugural auction was held during that first spring of 2002 in the sanctuary of the Neighborhood Church.  With the theme “Starry Starry Night,” each table featured plastic tableware and a single calla lily. But the room was full of generous donors who wanted this educational experiment to succeed for our families, for our Church, and for our Country.

Only by the grace of God, the daring of St. Monica Academy’s founders, the generosity of donors, and the courageous dedication of faculty could a school with such seemingly tenuous beginnings achieve so much.

As the years have progressed, new generations of families and faculty have emerged to take up the story, preserving St. Monica Academy’s fidelity to a classical, Catholic educational model while developing new traditions and enhancing music, drama, and sports programs each year. 

Beloved Headmaster Marguerite Grimm was welcomed in 2006, and Peter Halpin joined as a faculty member in 2009 before assuming his current role as Dean of the High School in 2014. Burgeoning enrollment and a 7-year search led the school to the current campus at Holy Redeemer Parish in 2016 — a location that was perfectly situated to allow St. Monica Academy to thrive throughout the COVID epidemic in 2020 and beyond.

At every turn, the story of St. Monica Academy has been marked by the superabundance of grace that God bestows on the daring and the generous. As St. Monica Academy celebrates its 25^th Anniversary year in 2025-26, we – the school’s current stewards – honor the vision of our founders and dedicate ourselves to ensuring that an education rooted in Faith, Reason, and Virtue will continue to bless our children, our Church, and our Country, far into the future.

St. Monica Academy has achieved the following milestones:

• In 2008 the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the Western Catholic Educational Association granted the Academy a six-year term of accreditation—a rarity for a new school. In 2014, the same Association granted us another six-year term of accreditation.

• The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has recognized the Academy as an independent Catholic school.

• In 2013, out of all the Catholic high schools in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, St. Monica Academy earned the highest mean SAT scores on all three sections of the SAT.

• In 2014, the Cardinal Newman Society named St. Monica Academy in its Catholic Education Honor Roll as one of the nation’s 71 Schools of Excellence, for its academic excellence, Catholic identity, and civic education.

• In 2018, the Cardinal Newman Society renewed St. Monica’s Catholic Education Honor Roll membership for another five-year term. St. Monica Academy is the only Catholic school in the Los Angeles metropolitan area that has been given such an honor.