Academics(in this section)

Welcome to Donahue Academy, a Catholic school in the diocese of Venice, Florida. I helped found the school, and we have seen amazing successes, including some of the area’s highest standardized test scores, athletic State Championships, several National Merit Scholars, and alumni in seminaries, graduate schools and the professions. Our school is a national leader in Catholic education. As part of my professional service, I also serve as the Director of K-12 programs for the Cardinal Newman Society. Through this venue, I speak and write on a broad range of topics related to Catholic schools. We are proud of what we have accomplished and hopeful about all that is yet to come as we encounter Christ and pursue excellence in all things. Please come visit us. We would love to have you join us for our wonderful daily Mass!
Dr. Daniel Guernsey, Principal

Donahue Academy Fully Exemplifies the Key Principles of Catholic Education

Our goal is our students’ strength and freedom. We want them to fully actualize their powers and potentialities: both those powers and potentialities they share with all men and those that God has particularly gifted them with.

Our Identity as a Catholic School

Donahue Academy’s Catholic identity is forged day by day in our classrooms and all school activities. Here is Mr. Mark Jahnke, one of our Rhetoric stage teachers, briefly explaining the five pillars of Catholic education at a Community & Culture Night. Please feel free to watch the entire evening’s presentation and all other Community & Culture Night recordings.

The Five Key Principles of Catholic Education

Donahue Academy is a leader in Catholic education. Our school’s leadership has been instrumental in articulating and promoting the principles of Catholic identity on a national level. These five principles are the elements the Church expects to find in all Catholic schools and which distinguish them from other schools. The principles are derived from Church documents related to education, including the documents of Vatican II, documents from the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education and the writings of various Popes.

  1. Catholic schools are inspired by a divine mission. All educational efforts are part of the Church’s mission of salvation and evangelization for the good of each student and the good of society.
  2. Catholic schools model Christian communion. Students are formed for relationship with God and with others in love and in service. All instruction is in fidelity with Catholic teaching.
  3. They are places where students encounter Christ in prayer, scripture and sacrament.
  4. They are places that integrally form students’ intellectual, spiritual, moral and physical dimensions.
  5. They seek to seek to impart a Christian view of the world, humanity, life, culture and of history, ordering the whole of human culture to the news of salvation and the unity of all knowledge.