About NPA

Our History

Now in our tenth year, Nativity remains the only all-scholarship private school in all of San Diego County and continues to serve over 160 students from middle school through high school to college.

Here is a brief look at our history:

1971 - The first “Nativity” school opens at the Jesuit Nativity Mission Center in New York City.

1999 - David Rivera, Founder of Nativity Prep San Diego, forms an advisory group in partnership with USD to open a Nativity-model school in San Diego’s most impoverished neighborhood.

2001 - Nativity Prep opens its doors to 19 students. Over the next three years, enrollment and funding increase by more than 200%.

2003 - Through the generous gift of a benefactor, Nativity moves from its original, leased location to a larger site at 3233 Market Street.

2005 - Nativity’s inaugural class of graduates earn acceptances to a variety of local high schools, including The Bishop’s School, The Preuss School, High Tech High, Saint Augustine, and Our Lady of Peace.  

2010 - Nativity Prep Academy continues to serve 160+ young men and women from Southeast San Diego, most of them second-language learners, all of them from low-income families.

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The historical roots for our school extend back to the 1950’s and to the efforts of the Society of Jesus (i.e., Jesuits) in New York City. The Jesuits’ inner-city outreach programs at the time included the Nativity Mission Center, located in the Bowery on the Lower East Side, and served a primarily Puerto Rican community of families. The Jesuits recognized that early intervention for these underserved, middle-school-aged children was necessary to save them from the ongoing cycle of crime, drugs, and poverty. They developed programs to alleviate these adverse conditions, with special attention given to a seven-week summer camp.

After two months in the Adirondack Mountains, and removed from the day-to-day struggles of inner-city life, the children flourished. It became evident, however, that to maintain the progress from the summer program, students needed an alternative to reentering the public school system. So, in 1971, the first “Nativity”-model middle school opened at the Jesuit Nativity Mission Center, serving approximately 20 students in the sixth grade. Since then, over 40 Nativity-model schools have opened in the United States, all of them serving low-income, impoverished students in a college-prep, scholarship-based educational setting and all of them based on the original Nativity school. More recently, within the past six years, the Nativity schools have joined with the San Miguel Schools (De La Salle Christian Brothers), all of them adhering to a set of nine mission standards and all affiliated under one educational network - the NativityMiguel Schools Network. There are now over 60 NativityMiguel Schools in the U.S.

NativityMiguel Schools (NMS) seek to counter the overwhelming pressures of street culture and poverty by challenging and encouraging underserved students to reach their full potential. NMS provide highly focused educational opportunities with excellent student-to-faculty ratios, extended-hour school days, and an extended-year schedule, daily tutoring, and enrichment and counseling programs. Noting that many inner-city public schools have dropout rates of 50% or more, NMS have succeeded where so many others fail. Better than 92% of NMS students graduate from high school, as compared to the national rate of 55% for African-American and Hispanic students, and the four-year dropout rate for the network's high school graduation class from three years ago (2007) was a mere 6%. A combined 96% of NMS graduates who completed high school in 2007 enrolled in a two- or four-year college in the fall of that same year.

In an effort to continue the NativityMiguel legacy of success for San Diego’s inner-city students, Nativity Prep Academy filed for incorporation in December of 1999 in the State of California as a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, under the aegis of an independent, lay board of trustees.

We currently serve 60+ students in grades six, seven, and eight. At little to no cost for our families, we offer a comprehensive, college-prep educational program in a private-school setting. We maintain an average student-to-teacher ratio of 7:1, allowing teachers to provide students with the personalized attention they need.

In September of 2001, we enrolled 19 students in the fifth grade; and in each subsequent year, through 2003, we increased our enrollment by graduating students to “upper” grade-levels - in 2002, we enrolled 20 new fifth graders, and our rising fifth graders moved on to sixth grade, giving us 40 students in fifth and sixth combined; and in 2003, we enrolled 20 fifth graders again, and our rising fifth and sixth grade students moved on to sixth and seventh grades, respectively, giving us a combined enrollment of 60 students. In 2004, and continuing through the present, we discontinued enrollment for incoming fifth graders and moved to a three-grade model of instruction in sixth, seventh, and eight grades, with a capacity enrollment of 60 students and an average of 20 students per grade.

In 2003, we moved from our initial ‘storefront’ leased location at 3275 Market Street to 3233 Market Street, land that was generously provided through a private benefactor. This year, in July of 2010, our Board approved the transition and move from Market Street to our current site at Holy Spirit Church, 2755 55th Street. The initial school site was leased commercial space, with one main office (administration) and one classroom for our fifth graders, and a leased trailer-classroom for our sixth graders. The deed of ownership for our current site belongs to Holy Spirit Church, which has extended a 50-year lease to our school. Our long-term strategic plan, however, includes continuing our efforts to raise $4.5M in capital and to build a brand-new facility on, and to subsequently return to, Market Street.

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