Sacred Heart Greenwich, formally known as the Convent of the Sacred Heart, is a private, independent Catholic all-girls college-preparatory school from kindergarten through twelfth grade with a coed preschool and prekindergarten located in Greenwich, Connecticut. As an independent day school, it is privately operated within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport and accepts students from throughout Fairfield and Westchester County. It serves students ages 3–18 in preschool through twelfth grade.
History
In August 2016, students Katherine Siciliano and Madison Miles were given an award for organic fertilizer at the White House.
In February 2018, Kate Murray, a student being threatened with expulsion over a Planned Parenthood sticker on her laptop, made national news.
Background
The Convent of the Sacred Heart was established in 1848 in Manhattan. The school moved to the Bronx in 1904 and opened in Greenwich in 1945. It is an all-girls school from kindergarten through twelfth grade with a coed preschool and prekindergarten. Madeleine Sophie Barat founded the Society of the Sacred Heart in Paris in 1800. She felt strongly that providing girls with an education based on Christian values was essential for a healthy society to emerge from the upheaval of the French Revolution. St. Madeleine Sophie envisioned a school that, while laying the foundation for an active faith and compassionate service for the poor, would develop each student's gifts and awaken a thirst for lifelong learning. In 1818, St. Philippine Duchesne led a group of five French-speaking Religious of the Sacred Heart to the New World and started the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi River. Thirty years later in 1848, on Bleecker Street in Manhattan, Mother Aloysia Hardey, RSCJ founded our School, Convent of the Sacred Heart. In 1904, the School moved to Maplehurst in the Bronx, and in 1945 opened at its present location in Greenwich, CT, the former Overlook Farm Estate, to accommodate a growing student body. Since then the School has continued its tradition of educating young women to learn and to lead. The school currently enrolls approximately 775 girls, and are part of the Network of Schools of the Sacred Heart, all of which are committed to a set of five intellectual and spiritual principles known as the Goals & Criteria of Sacred Heart Schools. Sacred Heart participates in a student exchange program with other Sacred Heart schools in the United States and around the world. The Society of the Sacred Heart operates Sprout Creek Farm in upstate New York, which once resided on the campus of Sacred Heart, Greenwich. Today, the School continues to use Sprout Creek Farm as an educational center for studying the environment and sends students and faculty there on field trips and retreats. In 2006, the school opened Stuart Hall, named for the 20th century Sacred Heart educator, Janet Erskine Stuart, RSCJ. The four-level Stuart Hall houses a Middle School and Library/Media Center, which caters to 21st-century learners with its print and digital collection, including an iPad lending program for the Lower School. The David Bloom Broadcast Studio, located in Stuart, is named in honor of the late NBC news correspondent, who died while covering the war in Iraq. The Broadcast Journalism Program supports the curriculum at all grade levels and, through Upper School classes. Sacred Heart Greenwich opened a 35,600 square foot athletic center] designed for women's sports in September 2015. The facility includes three National Federation of State High School Associations regulation basketball and volleyball courts, six international singles squash courts, classrooms for health and physical education, a strength and conditioning room, a dance and yoga studio, and a sports medicine center in addition to locker rooms for home and visiting teams, a press box, and administrative offices. Sacred Heart Greenwich also boasts a 25-yard heated indoor swimming pool. Outside, Sacred Heart Greenwich has a 154,800 square foot multi-purpose, synthetic outdoor playing surface, six hard-court tennis court, two natural grass fields, and a three-mile cross-country course. The field hockey and lacrosse turf fields were resurfaced in 2017 to install new surfaces similar to those used at the collegiate and professional levels. The field hockey field is a water-based artificial turf that is blue in color to provide high visibility both on the field and for spectators.
