Philadelphia's Archbishop Ryan Academy for the Deaf celebrates a century of educating students

Nishma Reyes' trip to school starts at 6:45 a.m., and it takes her an hour to get to Archbishop Ryan Academy for the Deaf in the Juniata Park section of Philadelphia.

Nishma, 11, thinks it's worth it. So do her parents, Angel and Betzaida, who moved from Puerto Rico to South Jersey because Ryan was the school they wanted for their daughter.

"It's the people, the sisters, the teachers," Betzaida Reyes said. "They're like family."

On Sunday, the Reyes family and hundreds of others gathered to mark Ryan's 100th anniversary with tours of the school, a banquet, and a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput and marked by a communion meditation with Ryan students signing and blind children singing.

The celebration was important, but to Sister Meg Fleming, principal of Ryan and its sister school, St. Lucy Day School for Children with Visual Impairments, the best part was her students' excitement.

"The kids are so full of joy," Sister Meg said. "They love life. They love communicating with people."

The school was the dream of Sister Patricia Hughes, who was deaf, and of Archbishop Patrick John Ryan, who led the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1884 until his death in 1911.

It opened in 1912 at 18th and Vine with the blessing of then-Archbishop Edmond Francis Prendergast, and eventually moved to 35th and Spring Garden, where it was housed for decades - for a time, as a residential school. It moved in 1996 to Norwood, Delaware County, and then came back to Philadelphia in 2009, joining with St. Lucy's on the campus of Holy Innocents Regional School at L and Hunting Park.

St. Lucy's and Ryan pupils have separate academic programs but share some activities - music, gym, and assemblies. And there are opportunities for mainstreaming in the adjacent Holy Innocents school.

Advancements in technology and medicine have meant fewer students over the years for Ryan; there are just eight students enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade. All use American Sign Language; they come from New Jersey, Bucks County, and Philadelphia.

"We are small," Sister Meg said, "but mighty."

Paul Thiergartner agrees. Paul, 14, is now a confident, outgoing freshman at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush, a public magnet school in the Northeast, but his Ryan years helped make him that way, he said.

"Here, you're connected, you're accepted, you're respected, you're loved; we take care of each other," Paul said through an interpreter. "The education here is really at the highest level. It's tough, but it's great."

Teacher Judy Collier loves watching the world open up for her students. When Joshua Tantoro arrived at Ryan from Indonesia, he had no language at all.

"All he could do was write his first name," Collier said of Joshua, who is now 15 and a successful high school student at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Germantown. "He was so frustrated."

The school is one of four special-education schools in the archdiocese; it is now managed by the Faith in the Future Foundation and supported by the foundation and by Catholic Charities. A Ryan education is costly; school officials estimate their program costs more than $16,000 per student.

"We're one of the most expensive schools to run, but the commitment to special education is great," Sister Meg said.

Inside the warm, bright classrooms on Sunday, alumni, parents, and former teachers - including Sisters of St. Joseph nuns, who used to help staff the school, and Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns, who do so now - hugged, looked at old photos, and marveled at 100 years of "a school of excellent history," as Chaput put it.

Volunteer Dominick Spedicato, 80, travels to Ryan several times a week from Upper Darby.

"Those children are an inspiration," Spedicato said. "This is a place of refuge and inspiration."