Bishop Walsh School

Bishop Walsh School is a K-12 Catholic school located in Cumberland, Maryland, and under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Approximately 600 students attend. The school also hosts a pre-K program and operates the St. Michael's pre-K program in Frostburg.

History

The school was founded by the Christian Brothers, a monastic order, and is named in honor of the Bishop James Walsh, a Cumberland-born missionary and member of the Maryknoll order, who preached in China and was imprisoned in solitary confinement by its Communist government for twelve years. When Walsh was finally released from prison in 1970 he was greeted by Pope Paul IV on August 25, 1970. He died at the age of ninety on July 29, 1981.

Opening in 1966, the school was originally Bishop Walsh High School (BW) and replaced four other Catholic high schools: La Salle, Ursuline Academy, Girls Central, and St. Peter's. In the mid-1980s, St. Mary's Elementary school closed and St. Patrick's and St. Peter & Paul reorganized as a grade school and middle school. Later, the grade school became St. John Neuman and BW became a middle/high school.