Our History
In 1963, Rev. Stanley Mitera was appointed pastor of St. Bernadette Parish, but since there was no building, Father Mitera was told by then Archbishop Gerald T. Bergen to purchase a home large enough to have Mass in the basement. This home was located at 42nd and Valley View Avenue. The area south and west of St. Bernadette was described as being "quite underdeveloped" at that time.
On May 8, 1966, St. Bernadette Church was dedicated. The building included a church with total seating capacity of 600 and a fifteen room school. The dominant feature of the St. Bernadette campus is a freestanding bell tower of reinforced concrete that is 65 feet tall and surmounted by an eight-foot bronze cross. Classes began in the five-day school in the fall of 1966 with first grade.
Our Present
We love hearing from families and staff that our school is a place where they feel they belong. That close-knit community comes from intentional effort in many areas:
Faith: All-School Masses and special ceremonies for certain feast days, quarterly rosaries, Religious Education in classrooms, priest visits, sacrament preparation
Service: server training, student council, vocations, canned food drives, charity collections, clean up and composting projects
Knowledge: emphasis on continued academic growth, in addition to extra and co-curricular learning opportunities like robotics team, reading and math groups, social studies and science projects, music, art, drama and physical education
Community: partnership with neighbor Gross Catholic and with our parish volunteers, activities with older and younger grade students interacting, activities with students from our fellow Omaha Catholic School Consortium school - St. Thomas More, Our Lady of Lourdes, Holy Cross, Sts. Peter and Paul and Dual Language Academy.
