As students attending Tyburn Academy of Mary Immaculate start cramming notebooks and folders, pens and pencils into backpacks for the opening of school next week, administrators and teachers will be gearing up for a monumental year.

The Auburn parochial school will commemorate three milestones in the coming days, weeks and months. Tyburn is not just celebrating 15 years of service to the community and a student enrollment that has doubled this year.

Founded by the late Rev. Albert Shamon, the institution launched as a high school in 1993 will officially open its doors to middle school students when the school year begins Wednesday.

“I think people have been waiting for us to do this,” principal Jeanne Hogan said. “We had many requests and now that we have the space, we've gone ahead and decided to put it together.”

According to Hogan, 32 students between the sixth and eighth grades have registered for the middle school's inaugural year and 51 will attend its high school. Enrollment last year was half that with 41 students participating in the high school program.

Hogan previously said opening the middle school is a natural next step for the institution, which moved to the old St. Mary's Elementary School on Clymer Street for the start of school last year after spending the last seven years in a converted dental laboratory.

“Originally, Father Shamon was

interested in a middle school in order for us to have a feeding program for the high school,” she said. “We discussed it, but we didn't have room in our other building.

“When we grew to this building, we were prompted by parent requests and the desire for growth to go ahead and offer a middle school.”

Ann and Matthew Fallon immediately jumped at the opportunity to send their two middle school-aged children, Sophia and Grace, to Tyburn this year.

“We have a lot of history with the school and we've always been impressed with the level of education and the preparedness students have coming out of the high school,” Matthew said, “so we're happy to know and fortunate that the opportunity existed to start our kids at the middle school level at Tyburn.”

The Fallons have ties to Tyburn since its inception 15 years ago, and Ann served on a committee to devise curriculum for the new school.

In addition to hiring teachers and composing curriculum, the committee discussed implementing a recruitment strategy to “get the word out there about the school and curriculum,” she said.

But the committee didn't have to do anything because, by July 4, 30 children had enrolled.

“What that did was confirm the need for Tyburn to open a middle school,” she said. “We know the school always needed to make the high school better. Getting that many students that quickly before we even got to recruiting confirmed to us that this is what Tyburn needed, that this is what Auburn needed.”

The academy hired four full-time and four part-time teachers, and classes will be held in the mostly vacant second floor of the school building. The school will follow state guidelines for curriculum - as it is required to - as well as offer enrichment classes, such as religion, study skills, world geography, Latin, instrumental band and string ensemble.

When Hogan first announced the plans, she said the middle school was not meant to “compete with the other middle schools in the city.”

While some middle school students from St. Joseph's School have now opted for Tyburn, principal Kathleen Coye said, overall enrollment has increased this year.

“As far as St. Joseph's School is concerned, we seem to be holding our own here,” she said.

Enrollment is estimated to be around 187 or 188 kindergarten through eighth grade students this year with about 50 of them middle school-aged.

“Tyburn and their expansion offers another choice in the area,” she said, “and I think that's a positive in the Auburn community.”

Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 239 or alyssa.sunkin@lee.net