Jacob Hicks is no stranger to the buildings and community that make up St. Francis de Sales Parish School. A 2015 graduate of the Lake Geneva school, he has also been a reading teacher there for the past four years.

But when he arrived on campus the first day of the 2026-27 school year, he barely recognized where he was — in a good way.

“The school feels like a completely new building,” said Hicks. “It was unbelievable to finally see the finished spaces.”

The two-story addition at Saint Francis de Sales Parish School, Lake Geneva, houses many new learning spaces. (Submitted Photo)

Thanks to a successful Love One Another campaign in 2022, St. Francis de Sales Parish was able to raise enough money for significant additions and improvements to their school building, which dates to 1952. Construction kicked off last fall on the two-story addition, which includes four new classrooms, innovative new learning spaces for science, technology and religion and a collaborative teachers’ workspace.

The need for more space and newer amenities for educators and students has existed in the community for years, said Principal David Wieters.

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “Prior to the new addition, three of our classes — our music class, our art class and our 4-year-old preschool — were all located across the parking lot in the parish center. They weren’t actually in the building itself, because we did not have enough space here for them.”

The setup was less than ideal from a security standpoint, but it was also very inconvenient. Having everything and everyone under one roof has also been a boon for school unity, too, said Hicks.

“The cohesive layout, with classrooms being brought closer together, has made the school feel more connected and convenient for both students and staff,” he said.

The now-adjoining 3- and 4-year-old preschool classroom spaces afford the school’s youngest students “a wonderful sense of comfort, happiness and belonging,” said preschool teacher Jenny Davidison.

“The preschool 4 classroom is so big and bright,” she said. “We are also able to easily join our preschool 3 friends through the connecting door, which gives the children even more opportunities to learn and grow together.”

The most anticipated elements of this addition are the ones that enable the school to develop its STREAM programs. “You’ve heard of STEAM,” said Wieters, referring to the acronym for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics in educational parlance. “STREAM takes it a step further with the ‘R’ for reading — and for us, religion.”

These STREAM elements include a new curriculum that engages students in areas including robotics, coding and computer science, engineering, electronics, digital media and more, focusing on “hands-on, critical thinking, activity-based” education, said Wieters.

“We had a company come and do an in-service for the teachers, and we learned about the robotics units that they have,” he said. “My personal favorite was building drones — making adjustments to see how fast they could go, how slow they could go, and detailing what changes we were making. It was a lot of fun.”

The school was also able to install interactive panels in each classroom. “They’ve made my lessons more interactive and engaging and allow me to do things with my teaching that I was not able to do before,” said Hicks.

The additional classroom space has also enabled Hicks to better organize, display and utilize his library of literature books, and the teacher workspace “gives us a place to quietly get work done or print, and also a place to eat lunch and have meetings,” he said.

(Submitted Photo)

St. Francis de Sales has an enrollment of 135 students, and the school community is tightly knit and known for small class sizes and long-term staff retention. These are things Hicks appreciated both during his time as a student over a decade ago and now as a staff member.

“One of the things I value most about St. Francis is our small class sizes. They allow teachers to work more closely with students one-on-one and make it easier to meet their individual needs,” he said. “I benefited greatly from the relationships I built with my former teachers — some of whom are now my coworkers — and my classmates. Those relationships helped me not only grow in my education but also in my faith, and I hope to provide the same experience for my students.”

The support of the broader parish community in raising these funds and supporting the school’s addition has been invaluable, Wieters noted.

“When we were doing the construction, we had to move quite a bit of furniture and equipment from the parish center to the garage, and then once we got the rooms completed, we had to move that from the garage to the classrooms,” he said.

Dozens of parishioners showed up to assist in the effort.

“That speaks volumes,” said Wieters. “They care about us, and it makes my job as principal a little bit easier, knowing that we’re so supported.