School History

Queen of Peace Catholic School was founded in 1912, when our parish was named Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.  The Benedictine Sisters from The St. Scholastica Priory were invited to teach in the school from its very beginning.

The Great Cloquet Fire of 1918 destroyed the school along with the church, the rectory, and the convent.  However, after the fire, Catholic school was so important to our families that the school building was rebuilt before anything else and our classes continued, uninterrupted, in make-shift accommodations all throughout construction.  Our new school building was completed within a year of the tragic fire that destroyed the entire city.  The school hall served as the church for the congregation until 1926 when the beautiful church, which stands today, was completed.

Over the years, vocations to the religious life were encouraged. Between 1912 and 1960, around 40 female students from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart school eventually entered the Benedictine sisters of the St. Scholastica Priory themselves.  They served Christ in this diocese and beyond.  During these years, the school enrollment averaged around 300 students per year.  However, as vocations declined in the years following the Second Vatican Council, the St. Scholastica Benedictines eventually found it prudent to reduce, and finally end, their commitments to staffing in our school.  They left Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in 1975, after 63 years.

In 1976 Bishop Anderson and Fr. Paul Fruth invited the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist to the Diocese.  The Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist then served the school for 25 years.

In 1989, the two Cloquet parishes – St. Casimir’s and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart – combined, and the new parish was named Queen of Peace, located in the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart facility.  The school’s name became Queen of Peace at this time, as well.

Pastor Seamus Walsh had the old convent torn down and replaced with a large addition which included our current gymnasium.  The school was turned over to lay leadership from 2001-2008.

Sister Therese Gutting, FSE, returned to lead the school again in 2009.  During her four years as principal, Sister Therese oversaw a $4 million rebuild and remodel of the school, which included the addition of an elevator and classrooms in the basement.  Sister Janet Siepker, FSE, took over the leadership of the school in 2012 until the Franciscan Sisters were finally called away from Cloquet in 2016, leaving Queen of Peace Catholic School, once again, under lay-administrative leadership and staffed by lay faculty.

After an often-changing grade structure, Fr. Justin Fish and principal David Douglas made the decision to expand the school through 8th grade in 2018. The expanded structure commenced with a new 7th grade in the fall of 2019 and completed with a new 8th grade in the fall of 2020.

Mr. Douglas led the school as principal from 2018 until June of 2023.  Fr. Nick Nelson became pastor of the parish and president of the school in the summer of 2021.  Mrs. Karin Sabyan has been Vice Principal and Director of the Preschool Program since 2020.  Mrs. Melissa Marti has been Principal since June of 2023.

In 2023, Mater Dei Apostolate, which offers Catholic hybrid education for high schoolers, took up residence in the basement of Queen of Peace Church.  With this new addition, we are now able to offer PreK through 12th grade Catholic education in one location, for the first time in our history.

In the 19th century, when the culture of the United States was predominantly Protestant, anti-Catholic sentiment became widespread in response to major movements of immigration from Catholic countries like Germany, Ireland, and Italy.  Many people – including venerable American figures like Mark Twain – spoke of the need to address what they saw as a dangerously increasing Catholic identity in America.  There were calls for Catholic children to be educated in public schools to “become American,” as opposed to remaining culturally distinct, as Catholics.  A strong movement opposed to giving tax-payer funds to parish schools also emerged.

In the 1880s, thirty-seven states, including Minnesota, passed constitutional amendments (called “Blaine Amendments) that blocked the use of our tax dollars for our own schools, on the pretext of concern for church-state separation.  We must remember that this was a time when nearly all public school programs were openly Protestant, so the idea of religious content being objectionable, as such, had not yet occurred in America.  Instead, the Blaine Amendments were aimed at American Catholic communities specifically.  However, as Providence would have it, the attempts to discourage Catholic education also came at a time when the United States Catholic bishops were building toward the greatest call for Christ-centered education that has, perhaps, ever been made. 

At the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, in 1884, the U.S. bishops declared that every Catholic family must [1.] teach their children at home or [2.] send them to Catholic parochial school, in order to avoid the mortal errors that tainted views presented in American public education, even in those days.  To aid Catholic families in these duties, the bishops also declared that every parish must endeavor to build a Catholic school for the godly education of their families’ children. 

Catholic people across America, and many more as missionaries sent from Europe, answered the bishops’ call.  The American Catholic school movement was especially led by heroic generations of young women, who consecrated themselves to Christ as members of religious teaching orders, for the work of teaching our children.

Already by the 1890s, an extensive network of Catholic parish schools had been completed, and by the high-water mark of the American Catholic parish school, in the 1960s, Catholics had built the largest non-public “school system” ever to be raised, anywhere, in history.  To this day, as measured by consistent sociological research at both secular and religious higher-learning institutions, Catholic schools set the American gold-standard in faith-filled instruction, in academic quality, and in community vitality.