For the roughly 250 students who streamed into Augustus Tolton Catholic Academy, the first day of school on Aug. 24 marked a special kind of new beginning.

It was the first day ever for the school, at 7120 S. Calumet Ave., which was formed by merging the former St. Columbanus and St. Dorothy schools.

It is the first school in the archdiocese to be designated a STREAM school, with emphasis on science, technology, religion, engineering, art and math, and it is named after Father Augustus Tolton, the first acknowledged African-American priest in the United States. The Archdiocese of Chicago, where he was ministering when he died, is sponsoring his cause for canonization.

“It’s a new curriculum, and a new wireless infrastructure,” said Father Matt O’Donnell, pastor at St. Columbanus.

The school has benefitted from archdiocesan grants and funding from Big Shoulders. Having more students also means more tuition, which helps financially, and O’Donnell is hoping for support from the community, he said.

O’Donnell and interim Catholic schools superintendent Mary Kearney, Alderman Roderick Sawyer (6th Ward) and representatives from the Big Shoulders Fund joined school faculty and staff in greeting students and parents on the first day.

Among them was seventh-grader Miya Daniels. Miya, who attended St. Columbanus last year, said she was looking forward to having more students in her class.

“I think it’s going to be a little bit better now that there are more kids,” she said, wearing a headband adorned with white flowers for the first day. “We got to meet the sixth-graders from St. Dorothy last year, so we already kind of know them.”

The two parishes began talking about merging their schools last October, and moved quickly to plan for a new school, O’Donnell said. In addition to designing a new curriculum and getting parents on board, the two schools made sure their students got a chance to interact.

All of them will be coming together to create a new Tolton Academy tradition, he said, noting that the new school has new uniforms and new school colors. Once the year gets under way, students will vote on a new school mascot.

The principal, Pamela Edwards- Sherley, said the school must be cognizant that it has drawn new students from several schools.

“It’s not just St. Columbanus and St. Dorothy,” she said. “My first expectation is that we learn to function as a family, that we look out for each other.”

Her second expectation is that the students and faculty become accustomed to inquiry-based learning, and see the connections between their academic work and the real world.

Sherley is a graduate of St. Columbanus who started her teaching career there, returning after 20 years in the Chicago Public Schools, where she was an assistant principal and a school STEM coordinator.

While most families were positive about the changes, Hannah Myers said she is reserving judgment. Her children, Aiden Phillip, a kindergartner, and Ariana Borum, a fourth-grader, attended St. Dorothy last year. Her mother encouraged her to send them to Tolton Academy, she said.

“I don’t know yet” how it’s going to work out, she said.

Melissa Peel was dropping off her children, Aria and Joshua, and said that part of the reason she chose Tolton was so that Joshua, in preschool, could benefit from some of the same teachers who taught Aria.

Cicely and Talae Perry decided that Tolton Academy would be right for their son, Ezra, who was starting preschool, after talking to the principal as well as the former principal at St. Dorothy.

“I liked what they had to say,” Talae Perry said. “I liked that they took two schools and made a new school with its own leadership.”