Celebrating Havern & Escuela de Guadalupe: two beloved Denver schools Loretto has long supported

To celebrate the long legacy of Loretto education, and in keeping with Back To School Week for many students, we wish to acknowledge the wonderful work being accomplished at Havern and Escuela de Guadalupe schools — two educational institutions in the Denver area that Loretto has long supported.  

Havern School was the brainchild of Sister Florence Wolfe, who was provincial of the Denver province. This was 1964 and the sisters were starting a western novitiate in Littleton, Colo. Sister Florence wanted some mission work for the novices to do and had the idea of starting a school for children with disabilities in the same building as the novitate. When Dr. William Cruickshankm a pioneer in learning disabilities, heard about her idea, he offered to train two of our sisters if we would have a school for children with learning disabilities. Sister Florence agreed, and so Sister Mary Ann Hurley and Sister Barbara Schulte were off to Syracuse to study and in 1966 began Havern.

After earning master’s degrees in educating the “perceptually handicapped” and interning at a school for children with learning disabilities, Loretto Sisters Barbara and Dorothy wanted to open a special needs school in the Colorado region. At the time, there were few instructional materials available for teaching children with learning disabilities, so the Loretto Sisters worked hard after classes to develop suitable lesson plans to provide their students the education they deserved. Thus, the Sisters of Loretto made great strides in the field of educating children with learning disabilities, and Havern notes how grateful the school is for their impact. Although Havern was incorporated in 1970 to operate under a private, non-denominational Board of Trustees, the school was housed within the Loretto Center until Havern School purchased the property from the Sisters of Loretto in 2018. Havern School remains committed to the legacy of Sisters Barbara and Dorothy in serving children with learning disabilities.

Escuela de Guadalupe, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, opened its doors in 1999. A Catholic, dual-language school, Escuela continues to build on the foundation laid by the Sisters of Loretto who championed the power of dual-language education from the beginning. Escuela has grown immensely since Susan Swain SL and Jesuit priest the Rev. Tom Prag first collaborated to create a school that would help meet the community’s greatest desire for their children to receive a quality education. We congratulate Escuela on its silver anniversary and look forward to its next 25 years as the school continues “to provide an academically excellent, Catholic education in English and Spanish to cultivate the next generation of community leaders.”

Receiving an education, be it through Catholic schools or by other means, is a tremendous gift. As one Loretto teacher put it, “To be educated is to recognize our gifts and to develop our potential. It is to become whole and integrated.” May receiving an education, which Loretto sees as a basic human right, be available to all.