AURORA, Ill. (CBS) — The boys-only Marmion Academy in Aurora announced Tuesday it is going co-ed.
The Fox Valley Catholic High School for High Schools has been an all-boys institution since its founding in 1933.
School leaders announced Tuesday that the school will welcome girls as early as fall 2026. The Marmion Abbey of the Monk Chapter voted for the change last weekend.
“Throughout our long history, Marmion Academy has made changes to its structure while remaining true to our values of academic achievement, spiritual formation and character development for our students,” Abbot Joel Rippinger, OSB, said in a news release. “After a year of intense study, discernment and prayerful reflection, we decided now was the right time to make this change. Our values, rooted in the Catholic Benedictine tradition, will remain at the core of our mission.”
The plan does not require all students to take co-ed classes throughout the four years of high school, but rather that boys and girls take single-sex classes as freshmen and sophomores, and then co-ed classes as juniors and seniors.
The school said the co-ed setting will better prepare students for life in a “diverse, interconnected world” after graduation.
Over the past 50 years, numerous former Catholic high schools for boys have entered the Chicago area, including St. Ignatius College Prep in 1979, St. Viator High School in 1987, Fenwick High School in 1992, Loyola Academy in 1994, and Marist High School in 2002.
But Mount Carmel High School in ChicagoAfter considering admitting girls starting in the fall of 2023, it will remain all boys after the school board rejected the proposal.
