As the Academy of Holy Angels (AHA) welcomes students — both new and returning — to its Richfield campus, Father Mike Tix hopes the school feels “like home away from home.”
It’s an important Academy of Holy Angels staff effort, that students “know that it’s a place where they’re known, they’re safe, they’re valued, and with an opportunity to learn and grow to their fullest potential in whatever direction that means,” said Father Tix, chaplain at the Academy of Holy Angels and vicar general for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
The Catholic high school will welcome 645 students in grades 9-12 for the 2026-2027 school year; efforts have been underway since the end of last school year for students to make connections, Father Tix said.
“(I)n the high school years, friendships are huge, connections are huge, and those happen in lots of ways in the social settings” as well as the “classroom experience” and “extracurricular activities and various interest groups,” he said.
Meanwhile, roughly 80% of newly enrolled Academy of Holy Angels students come from a Catholic elementary and/or middle school. One of the efforts to guide incoming freshmen is the 9th Grade Academy. In an emailed response, President David Sorkin and Principal Heidi Foley jointly described this homeroom experience’s objective as helping freshmen “transition to high school and learn the principles of schoolmanship at AHA; that is, how to do high school at AHA.
“For example, ninth grade homeroom teachers will be intentional about guiding 9th graders through skills such as organization, time management, goal-setting, and self-advocacy, along with learning the machinations of AHA culture, including mission, Catholic social teaching, the AHA Way, and the cardinal virtues,” they stated.
Father Tix described the AHA Way as: “a way for us to be at Holy Angels.”
“(It’s) to try to help get everybody on the same page, in a sense, of: This is who we are, this is what we do, this is what we believe, this is how we act,” he said.
One of the AHA Way values, Father Tix said, is “care for the dear neighbor, which goes back to the founders of Holy Angels, the Sisters of St. Joseph (of Carondelet) … recognizing the dignity of each person and the respect that goes along with that.” Other values include students helping each other “to be successful, to have a good experience, to grow in God’s love,” he said.
Among the new students learning the AHA Way for the 2026-2027 school year at the Academy of Holy Angels will be 19 incoming freshmen who graduated from Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis this past school year. With the two schools roughly two miles apart, there has been a history of Annunciation graduates becoming Academy of Holy Angels students.
Father Tix said Academy of Holy Angels staff spent time listening and learning “from the Annunciation students’ experiences of last year” — following a fatal shooting Aug. 27, 2025, during an all-school Mass at the church — and adhering to trauma-informed counseling guidance to help students in their transition to Academy of Holy Angels.
“They went through a lot last year, a lot that we can’t even begin to imagine,” Father Tix said of the students. “(N)ow, how do we help those teens as they’re transitioning to high school with a lot of that experience that nobody would wish upon anyone?”
Sorkin and Foley jointly shared that the Academy of Holy Angels “has a dedicated counselor for all Annunciation students.
“Additionally, teachers and staff have received special training to better understand and serve students coming to us from Annunciation,” they stated.
To accompany these new students, Father Tix said there’s great importance in “looking to the example of Jesus” who met people “where they were as they came to him. We’re called to be able to imitate that,” Father Tix said.
“This year calls us to imitate that in a whole new kind of way, as we recognize people who have experienced trauma,” he said. “How do we be that presence of Christ for them, to accompany them? I like to go back to the words of Pope Francis. As he talked about it, we’re called to be able to encounter, engage and accompany. And that’s what we do.”
Accompanying, Father Tix said, involves walking with students “in a way that helps them to be able to recognize the good that surrounds them; recognize the gift of God’s love that supports them; and helps them, accompanies them, to be able to grow again to that greatest potential.”
SCHOLARSHIPS FOR ANNUNCIATION GRADS
Dan and Therese Kosch, who are parishioners of Pax Christi in Eden Prairie, wanted to find ways to help after talking with their neighbors next door, an Annunciation family with three children, two of whom were in the church on Aug. 27, 2025.
“(H)earing them reflect on it, and what they’re going through, and the impact it had on their kids and their family” as well as “how important it would be for their son to be able to go to a Catholic high school and stay with the friends that have been through this” planted a seed for Dan and Therese Kosch, Dan Kosch said.
“(T)hat is what got us thinking of … what could we do, potentially, to help him and that family and then others to, potentially, try to help stay together coming out of eighth grade at Annunciation, having gone through everything that they had been through,” Dan Kosch said.
For the Kosch family, “our perspective of Catholic education is there’s nothing better,” Dan Kosch said.
“(T)he community, the faith, similar values — it’s like a big insurance policy relative to your kids,” he said. “And friends that we have that came out of Catholic education, we still have, that are really good friends of ours because of that community. … (W)e’ve always said it’s one of the best investments we’ve ever made.”
The couple connected with the Annunciation leadership team, which approved the concept of a scholarship fund, to assist students who wanted to continue their Catholic education into high school. The leadership team pointed Dan and Therese Kosch to the St. Paul-based Catholic Community Foundation (CCF) of Minnesota. CCF ultimately held and administered the scholarship fund to the recipient high schools, waiving its fund management fees.
“It couldn’t (have) happen(ed) without them and their willingness to manage it, to make it available, to make it technically work, to publicize it, and then to distribute the funds to the high schools,” Dan Kosch said.
Staff at businesses near Annunciation Church and School in Minneapolis and at various Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis publicized information about the scholarship fund.
Dan Kosch said he and Therese felt “grateful for all the support that people had for the initiative to begin with.”
Many contributions “came from people that we didn’t know, that just really were struck by the cause, if you will, the initiative, (of) supporting these eighth graders to stay together and to keep their Catholic education going,” Dan Kosch said.
The scholarship fund, having raised just under $4,200 per student, distributed 31 scholarships to three Catholic high schools — the Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield, DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis and St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights.
“The high schools were just great to work with as well,” Dan Kosch said. “I had the opportunity to work with each of the presidents and their development directors and everybody was so great.”
Asked whether the scholarship fund would continue, Dan Kosch said “it was intended to be, indeed, something for this particular class at this particular time.”
One thing that struck Dan and Therese Kosch amid the fundraising effort was the “sincere appreciation that these families had, for people to be caring about them and to be helping to make it happen, that their kids were indeed going to Catholic school.”
He said that he and Therese are “so grateful for all the people that helped make this happen.”
