St. Joe’s Prep holds its first HBCU symposium as the prestigious private school becomes more diverse

When Daryl Lloyd graduated from St. Joseph’s Preparatory School in 2003, he said he was one of only eight students of color in his class.

A lot has changed since then: The storied private Catholic boys’ school in North Philadelphia with an enrollment of nearly 940 is now 26% students of color. Officials there hope to grow that number even more.

The school on Saturday hosted its first historically Black college and university symposium, bringing in representatives and leaders from 14 HBCUs including Cheyney and Lincoln in Chester and Delaware Counties as well as Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse. The symposium was arranged by the school’s African American and Latino Alumni Association, A4 for short, which since 1990 has been working to support students of color at the Prep.

That’s not all, though. The recently hired vice president of enrollment management is Black, the school is recruiting more heavily in neighborhoods with families of color, and since 2022, the Prep has been offering “affinity grants” to children of HBCU employees and graduates. The $5,000 grants also go to children of first responders, teachers, and those who serve in the military. Last year, 25 students received the awards.

“We are on an amazing trajectory,” said Nailah Givens, the Prep’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “It helps that every class has been growing in students of color. When you’re looking around in your classrooms, you’re not the only.”

Even at a time when President Donald Trump has targeted diversity programs at K-12 schools and the nation’s colleges for elimination, St. Joe’s Prep is standing proudly behind its efforts. And officials there say it’s part of the school’s core mission. Justice is one of the five pillars that the school instills in students.

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“Having a population that is so representative here is at the heart of the ethos of the Jesuit mission,” said John Marinacci, who became the school’s first lay president four years ago. “So it’s not an option for us and it’s not a fad. This is foundational to our identity.”

Marinacci and other Prep officials made the point repeatedly that they value other kinds of diversity, too, including geographic, socioeconomic, and political.

For students, the HBCU symposium was a clear sign of a growing commitment to racial diversity.

“I was surprised. I didn’t think we would ever be having something like this,” said Vaughan Cross, a senior from Blue Bell whose parents each attended an HBCU and who is interested in following in their footsteps. “They have embraced Black culture, but not to that full extent. I feel like they finally are trying to make that schoolwide. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel included.”

St. Joe’s Prep was founded in 1851 in Old City, along with what was then St. Joseph’s College, and moved to its current location in North Philadelphia in 1868. When the college, now a university, moved to City Line Avenue in the 1920s, the Prep stayed put, remaining committed to its North Philadelphia neighborhood, even rebuilding there after a devastating fire in the 1960s.

Two recent former mayors, Michael Nutter and Jim Kenney, are among its prominent graduates. Building contractor John McShain, whose company built the Pentagon and other famed Washington buildings, attended, too. So did Phillie Phanatic Tom Burgoyne and Philadelphia Eagle Jeremiah Trotter.

The school draws students from about 172 zip codes in the region and more than 220 feeder schools. About 30% come from Philadelphia.

Admission is competitive, with a goal of about 650 applicants for 240 spots.

Students, who spend their free time shooting basketball in shirts, ties, and dress pants, talk about the value of “the brotherhood.” Students are not ranked academically. There is no valedictorian.

“We’re comparing you to you at the end of the day,” said Bill Avington, the school’s director of communications and a Prep grad. “We want you to become the best version of yourself.”

Tuition this year is $28,300; the school handed out $9.2 million in financial aid in the last year to make it more accessible to students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Rooted in the Jesuit tradition, the Prep focuses on five principles displayed on a wall that describe their graduates: open to growth, intellectually ambitious, religious, loving, and committed to doing justice. Service to community is required and remains a key component.

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The Prep is where Lloyd said he began his lifelong devotion to service, starting with a coat drive he organized for young people who needed help.

“I saw a family walking down the street one day on my way home that didn’t have coats,” and the next day, he told an administrator at Prep about it. “He said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ and challenged me to come up with something.”

Lloyd, a graduate of The Catholic University in Washington, now serves on his local school board in addition to heading the Prep’s alumni association.

The diversity of the school has fluctuated over the years. Over the last decade, the number of students of color in the freshman class has grown from 16% in 2016 to 28% among current freshmen, the school said. And the vast majority that enroll stay. The school’s overall retention rate is 97.5%.

The A4 began to help bring in new enrollment. Because of concerns that students of color weren’t graduating at the same rate as their counterparts, the alumni began providing intensive academic and social mentoring.

Having an organization focused on supporting students of color was one of the reasons Lloyd decided to enroll at the Prep.

“Now, I get to be that same conduit for students, which is, fantastic,” he said.

Alonzo Jones, alumni association vice president and 2003 Prep grad, said he’s proud of how far the school has come since he walked the halls as a student. He had come to the Prep from a nearly all-Black Catholic school and had to acclimate to a predominantly white student body.

“The unique thing about the Prep is it’s a place that is always terrific at looking inward first, and it’s the reason that I continue to come back,” said Jones, 40, a senior communications manager at Philadelphia Works who lives in Drexel Hill.

Jones, who got his bachelor’s from Neumann University and a master’s from Arcadia, said A4 members come together weekly, some weeks daily, to help with Prep activities, from sports to college visits to school plays and debate club.

Sherman Washington, a Prep board member and 2005 graduate, said he will continue to stay involved because of all that the Prep did for him, taking him from a young, naïve boy to adulthood.

“It’s a debt that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pay,” said Washington, who works as a vaccine manufacturer at Merck and also runs his own consulting company.

Washington, a St. Joseph’s University graduate who lives in Fishtown, wore a suit jacket with the phrase ‘you are your choices’ stitched inside.

“When you limit choices for people, the outcomes are limited as well,” said Washington. “St. Joe’s Prep and A4 expand those options.”

Senior Azriel Pennick, 17, of North Philadelphia, said the Prep helped him get through two of the toughest times in his young life, including a 2024 fire that severely damaged his grandmother’s funeral home and residence where he lived, and a battle with depression.

His teachers supported him. The school gave him a box of clothes and supplies. The alumni association reached out.

“I learned so much being here through those challenges,” he said. “I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I went anywhere else.”

The college tours last year hosted by the alumni association have been a highlight, he said.

“I got a look at Howard [University] ... and it was amazing,” agreed senior Silas Griffin, 17, who lives in North Philadelphia, about five minutes from the Prep.

With a 3.9 GPA, Griffin, who heads the school’s African American and Latino Culture Club, aspires to attend Princeton or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and become an environmental engineer, focusing on renewable and cleaner energy.

His mother Selena Gilbert, a Philadelphia public school counselor, recalled how excited her son was the first day he visited the Prep.

“He said, ‘I believe I can make a difference,’” she recalled. “‘There wasn’t that many African American boys. But for me to come there, I believe I can try to promote diversity.’”

And along with acing his classes — his mom proudly displayed his transcript — he has.

“We can’t wait for him to graduate,” Lloyd said. “He’s going to I’m sure end up running [the alumni association] some day.”

Lloyd, Washington, and Jones have worked for the last year organizing the symposium and invited other public and private schools in the region to participate.

For years, the alumni association had been taking students on tours of HBCUs, like the one at Howard last year.

But the group wanted to broaden access to more HBCUs and widen exposure to more students, he said. This year’s symposium featured presentations by the president of Dillard University, an official with the United Negro College Fund, and MSNBC host and contributor and college professor Jason Johnson.

“This is not your traditional college fair,” Dillard president Monique Guillory told symposium attendees Saturday. It’s an important effort by St. Joe’s Prep in “underscoring the importance of HBCUs particularly at this sociohistoric moment in the country.”

Avington said the Prep hopes to make the symposium, which drew nearly 300 student registrants, an annual event.

Cross, whose parents attended an HBCU and who is vice president of Prep’s African American and Latino Cultural Club, was helping set up for a symposium event Saturday morning. His mother, Tajahnee Cross, a Spelman graduate who has worked in informational technology management consulting for decades, was about to speak on a panel highlighting successful careers of HBCU grads.

“I didn’t expect this many people to show,” Cross said. “So it just shows the love that we have at our school and that they’re really caring about us.”