About Us:
The academy's patroness, Our Lady of the Angels, was chosen especially because of the school's location in the greater Los Angeles area, a city named after "Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles."
Our Lady of the Angels Academy, a private Catholic school for grades K through 8 and a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, operates under the guidelines of the United States District of the Society of St. Pius X.
Mission and Philosophy:
Our Lady of the Angels Academy provides children with a thorough Catholic education founded upon traditional principles. The school strives ultimately to form good Catholic citizens, men and women willing and able to work for the restoration of all things in Christ, freely submitting to the reign of Our Lord in the spiritual, moral, intellectual, and physical realms.
The Catholic school exists to cultivate a soil in which the Faith and the love of God might grow. The teachers at Our Lady of the Angels Academy serve this end by helping form in the child lasting qualities of the mind and heart through exposure to the true, the good, and the beautiful across the entire curriculum. In the study of literature and the humanities, they reveal to the child the nobility of the human soul, which is ever thirsting for the absolute, and all their effort as teachers is to awaken this same thirst in the child's own soul. Throughout the various disciplines, they draw the child to rectify and strengthen his natural faculties in harmony with his created good so that he might have the desire and the strength to embrace, freely and with confidence, the supreme Good, God Himself.
Learning is a profoundly human process, one best accomplished through patient, qualitative drawing out, rather than a mechanistic, quantitative filling up. Although, the school will strive continuoulsy to provide teachers and students with the best possible tools and resources in terms of texts and an integrated curriculum, it will be the obvious love which the teacher has for the subject matter, his mastery of it, and his talent in communicating that knowledge and love, which will spark a fire in the children, fostering in them a lifelong love of learning.
The Founder:
The school's founder, Father Charles J. Ward, was the academy's first principal.
As had always been the vision of Monsignor Charles P. Donahue, who was responsible for acquiring the church property, the prior of Our Lady of the Angels Church, Father Charles J. Ward, deemed it a fitting time to open a school for the education of children. After devoting extensive thought and research to the logistical, legal, financial, and material requirements for the establishment of a school, Father Ward gathered a group of capable and willing teachers from the parish. It was because of his tremendous leadership, organization, and patience that the school changed from a dream to reality in September of 1997, with twenty-one students. His example of dedication to further the glory of God enabled the school to grow every year, developing the curriculum and admitting new pupils as time went on. The legacy of the school and the formative tradition from which our children benefit today originate from the Marian-inspired selflessness of Father Ward. Our Lady of the Angels Academy has since won first place in the Society of Saint Pius X Eight Grade National Religion Exam a total of ten years, an accomplishment that would have never been possible were it not for the academy's founder.