Cindy Williams Diem Jennings CLASS OF ’22,

PRINCIPAL, BLAH BLAH

Sacred Heart

When Diem Jennings was just four years old, her parents saw a flyer for Sacred Heart School in a Bronx laundromat—and for the last ten years, she and her parents found at Sacred Heart an education that matched their aspirations. “They didn’t just want me to do well in school,” Diem explains of her parents, “they want me to have multiple dimensions that define me.” The school’s valedictorian in 2022, Diem explains what she thinks makes Sacred Heart special: “The teachers push you to be your best.”

For 107 years, since striving immigrants first began moving to the South Bronx hoping for a better life, St. Athanasius School has anchored the Hunts Point community and fueled its aspirations. Even through the devastation of the 1970s, when the neighborhood lost 70 percent of its housing stock to fires and demolition, and as the population collapsed by more than 70 percent in just one decade, tenacious educators like former principal and community legend Marianne Kraft ensured the school remained a vibrant hub and beacon of hope for the community. Literally surrounded by rubble, the school had the audacity to declare that its students were “children of God and children of the earth”—and to provide them an education worthy of their dignity every day.

When it came time to look for a high school, the family wasn’t necessarily looking at private school options, but at the urging of Principal Abigail Akano and others, they explored a few. And after receiving multiple scholarship offers and outperforming all other applicants on Convent of the Sacred Heart’s math placement test, Diem is in her first year there. Why does she like math so much? “It always gets more challenging,” she explains simply.

Marianne also hand-selected and groomed a successor, Bronx native Jessica Aybar, who carries on a vibrant legacy of leadership. In her eight years as a St. Athanasius teacher, academic dean, and principal, Jessica has driven game-changing results. Under her leadership, the school has seen academic achievement results that rival some of the top-performing public and charter schools in the state, and she has grown enrollment and expanded the school by

Diem’s parents credit her Partnership educators with making a crucial difference for their daughter: “When you feel people are invested in your child—and they are knowledgeable—then she is invested. That makes all the difference.”