About St. Michael Catholic School
St. Michael Catholic School
Welcome to St. Michael Catholic School! SMS is a Catholic school in the Diocese of Gary offering the region’s finest in Catholic education with preschool through 8th grade in Schererville, IN!
- Providing opportunities for maximum academic performance
- Developing self-esteem, leadership, and personal responsibility
- Promoting positive Christian attitudes that lead to active participants in the church and society
- Encouraging social responsibility in an effort to promote peace and justice
- Sharing with parents in the educational mission of the Church
St. Michael Catholic School is an outstanding environment with a balanced curriculum that educates students in the 3 R’s: relationships, respect, and responsibility. The balanced curriculum includes art, music, physical education, writing workshops, foreign languages, and many extracurricular activities and sports. SMS is committed to the latest technology to enhance your child’s education, including computer labs, SMART Board technology in every classroom, and Chromebooks.
well-trained faculty and staff
Always discovering, always engaged, and always learning.
The Saint Michael story began in the late 1800s when Schererville was mostly farmland and rolling prairie. Forced to travel to distant churches over bad roads with only primitive transportation, the German Catholic pioneers of the fledgling town petitioned Bishop Dwenger of Fort Wayne for the establishment of a parish in Schererville in 1873. Permission was granted and a church was constructed on land donated by the town founder, Nicholas Scherer. On September 29, 1874, the feast day of St. Michael, our first church was blessed and a parish of eighty families was formed.
Fr. Gottfried Kueng became our first pastor in 1875 and that same year a new rectory was built. History was made when Bishop Dwenger appointed Fr. William Berg as pastor on May 28, 1881. A great believer in Catholic education, in 1886, Fr. Berg arranged for Franciscan Sisters to teach in the town school.
On September 16, 1900, St. Michael School opened as a full time parochial school. A tragic event occurred on September 27, 1893; extensive vandalism was discovered in the church and in the cemetery. Two lay religious brothers from The Divine Word Society were deeply moved when they heard about this vandalism. Even though they usually worked in seminaries and motherhouses, they came to our cemetery and helped erect Mount Calvary, cast and installed the Stations of the Cross, the Lourdes Grotto, the Garden of Gethsemane Grotto and the Resurrection Grotto. They worked as a team with Brother Fridolin Ifen’s specialty being grotto design and construction and Brother Paul Tanner’s specialty being the sculpting of statues and crafting the reliefs found outside and inside the Grottos.
“Be fruitful and multiply,” said God—and we were fruitful and did multiply. By the time Fr. Patrick Connolly became our pastor in 1987, we had grown to nearly 2,000 families and had for a third time outgrown our worship space. Looking to the example set by our predecessors, we saw that our parish has always changed to meet the needs of the faithful. At the same time, we wanted to preserve our rich heritage. Our stunning collection of colorful stained glass windows –excellent examples of fine European craftsmanship – were restored and reinstalled in our new worship space. The ornate altar was moved from the old church along with refurbished statuary, light fixtures and other items to provide an important link to our parish’s long heritage. Our new church was dedicated by Bishop Dale Melczek on November 3, 1999. On November 12, 2000 the new Bell Tower was blessed by Father Patrick Connolly.
Fr. Martin Dobrzynski is presently the pastor of the parish and he continues to inspire the parish to be a place of prayer, hospitality and charity. On April 14, 2006, Fr. Marty blessed the refurbished Stations of the Cross, which were cast in bronze from the originals, in a special dedication service on Good Friday. The installation of brick pathways and lighting have made the Stations of the Cross more accessible to visitors.
In 2008, we launched the “Building Faith, Families & Future” stewardship program to raise money for three of the most pressing needs identified in a parishioner questionnaire and feasibility study: 1.) Completing interior construction of the south end of our church. 2.) Make repairs to and upgrade the overall condition of the parish school building. 3.) Remove the old church structure, dedicating that land to future cemetery use.
On September 27, 2009 – as we gathered to celebrate the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel – Fr. Marty blessed and christened our new “St. Patrick Social Hall”, along with three adjacent meeting rooms and a full-service kitchen. School renovations funded by “Building Faith, Families & Future” included the installation of energy efficient lighting in classrooms and hallways, a new boiler, new windows and façade surrounding the windows, and the addition of six interactive Smart boards.
Fr. Marty initiated the “Set Your Legacy in Stone – Inscribe & Donate a Paver” Project in the Fall of 2011 because two of the original walkways in our cemetery – a historic landmark with gravestones dating back to the 1880s – had nearly disappeared due to the ravages of time and needed to be replaced. These walkways now feature the many names of members that have generously supported the St. Michael Parish mission.
Our latest campaign, Our Lasting Legacy raised over $3.5 million dollars for the much needed renovations of the exterior and interior facets of the church. These renovations wrapped up in July of 2020 and included a new roof, pavement, painting, and rebuilding of rose windows just to name a few.
The St. Michael Catholic community of today remains a faith-filled, family centered and educationally enriched parish. It is composed of our founding families, recently moved families, young families, and many single and all representing many ethnic and professional areas as well as other walks of life. Services and service opportunities are abundant. There are a variety of ways that people of all ages can get involved in the parish community, become educated, enriched and reach out to those in need.
Jesus said, “They will know you by your love.” We pray that our home will always be rooted in that love.