Notre Dame School of Milwaukee, a K3-8 Catholic school, is expanding one of its three campuses to help address growing demand and provide students with an improved facility.
NDSM held a groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday at its St. Florian boys middle school campus, located at 1215 S. 45th St. in Milwaukee. The St. Florian campus expansion project will add a secure main entrance, STEM lab, library, classrooms, a graduate support center and dedicated outdoor space. The gym will also be renovated as part of the project.
The project is expected to be completed in November.
“We very much believe that all children, no matter what zip code, neighborhood, area you grow up in, should have high quality facilities,” NDSM president
Patrick Landry said. “All kids deserve a library, a playground, an outdoor space, a gym, accessibility, a safe school building. Outside of growth, we wanted to make sure that we could build and have a quality facility for our kids.”
NDSM also plans to renovate the kitchen to provide an in-house meal program through the project. The school will also build a stairwell that will allow access to six classrooms that already exist in the building.
“Right now, there’s a dead-end corridor, and so we really aren’t able to use a wing of the current school building until we build an additional stairwell,” Landry said.
NDSM
purchased the St. Florian campus in July 2023. The building was previously used by
Cristo Rey Jesuit High School.
NDSM currently serves 740 students across three campuses and expects to have 900 students by 2028. The St. Florian campus expansion project aims to support that enrollment growth.
NDSM also operates a coed campus at 1425 S. 26th St. and a girls middle school campus at 1420 W. Scott St.
Across its three campuses, NDSM has waitlists of 40-50 children, about half of what the waitlists used to be before purchasing the St. Florian campus.
“Opening up these classrooms and opening up this facility, we’ve been able to accommodate a lot of that waitlist pressure to make sure that those families and those students had a seat here,” Landry said.
The total cost of the project is approximately $8 million to $9 million, Landry said. Funds from the school’s $15 million Together We Grow Capital Campaign —which launched last summer — and a $10 million New Market Tax Credit are supporting the campus expansion. NDSM has raised about $14.2 million in pledges, Landry said.
Individual donors, family foundations and organizations such as the
Northwestern Mutual Foundation,
Burke Foundation and
Greater Milwaukee Foundation have supported NDSM’s expansion efforts, Landry said.
“I think that that’s been something that’s been really inspiring to us, of how generously people have opened up their hearts and wallets to make sure that this gets done,” Landry said.
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