Ville de Marie Academy


Ville de Marie Academy is a private, Roman Catholic academy in Scottsdale, Arizona, United States. It is located within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, but it is independent of the diocese. It accepts students in all grade levels from kindergarten to grade twelve. It uses a classical curriculum to teach students to love the good, beautiful and true.

Background

In the mid 1980s, a group of concerned parents in the greater Phoenix area began meeting together to discuss the education of their children. Some had been sending their children to existing parochial schools, others were home schooling, but all felt a need to be more intimately involved in the education of their children and to educate them in a deeply Catholic environment. The fruit of their discernment and prayer was the founding of Ville de Marie Academy in 1991. Motivated by a strong desire to provide their children with a truly exceptional education, it was their conviction that while parents are indeed the primary educators of their children, their duties as educators could be more perfectly fulfilled as they united to form a school that would reflect their devotion to Catholic education. Their plan was to offer an integrated K-12 curriculum in the classical liberal arts that would combine academic excellence and a vibrant spiritual life in an atmosphere conducive to the formation of the whole child – a place where the faith would inform and guide the entire life of the school.
Ville de Marie began with 40 students in grades K-9, and five full-time faculty members, including its first headmaster and co-founder, Mr. Chris Speier. The school grew rapidly, and by the following year, the academy had nearly doubled its enrollment to include about 80 students. An additional high school grade was added each year and the school began offering a complete K-12 curriculum in 1994. In 1995, the first graduating class of Ville de Marie consisted of six students. It now has about 200 students.