Parochial school tries mail route

A traditional Catholic school has found a nontraditional way to attract new students -- advertising through a company that mails packets of coupons to homes.

Holy Family School's advertisement for its recent open house was tucked in with two dozen SuperCoups coupons promoting such services as for dry cleaners, custom pictures, septic system maintenance, and personal trainers.

Principal Ann Marie Manning said the coupon targeted about a dozen nearby communities, including East Bridgewater, Halifax, Kingston, and Scituate. The idea came out of a brainstorming session with teachers on how to promote the school, Manning said. Administrative assistant Maggie T. Crane designed the coupon, which features pictures of students in a classroom and outside the school. It reads, ''Come experience how we are."

Ron Benedetti, president of the Avon-based SuperCoups franchise for the national company, said schools rarely do such advertising.

Manning expressed satisfication with the results, saying about 300 people attended the Jan. 30 open house and several mentioned the SuperCoups ad, which cost the school about $1,000. The school also promoted the open house with inserts in local parish bulletins and through word of mouth. The event was part of a national Catholic Schools Week campaign.

The school had about 45 openings, including 25 in kindergarten, for next fall, she said.

Holy Family, which opened in 1941, attracts about half of its 440 students in grades K-8 from Rockland and the rest from 21 area communities. Tuition for next year is $3,275 for kindergarten and $2,900 for the other grades.

The school has flourished because of its strong Catholic identity, skilled faculty, and emphasis on the arts, Manning said.

The building's corridors are decorated with neatly done stencils in religious themes: ''Smile, God loves you," and ''We love Him because He first loved us."

Students dress in tidy uniforms, a hallmark of a Catholic elementary school education. Boys wear blue shirts and ties, and girls are clad in dark-blue plaid jumpers.

In one classroom on a recent day, children rehearsed a song written by music teacher Mary Engel. The lyrics were taken from the school's mission statement, which reads in part: ''Holy Family School is a spirit-filled Catholic community celebrating Christ as the center of our lives . . ."

Manning has been principal for seven years, after two years of teaching social science to seventh- and eighth-grade students. When she arrived at Holy Family nine years ago, the enrollment was 380 students.

Kelli O'Brien-McKinnon, Holy Family's director of development and president of its parents association, has two sons in the school -- Zach, in eighth grade and Riley, in fourth.

''The kids have a lot of respect and compassion for one another," she said, crediting the school's tradition of charitable work that helps them ''really learn how blessed they are."

This year, the children are collecting supplies for a sister school in Honduras, and raised money for victims of the South Asian tsunami.

Matt Carroll can be reached at mcarroll@globe.com.