Montville — The small, elite Saint Bernard School is becoming a bit less small.

With 20 more students than it usually has this school year, spread across grades six through 12, Saint Bernard has enrolled 350 kids rather than the customary 330 of the past five years. This accounts for a roughly 6 percent increase compared to recent years.

Headmaster Donald Macrino said internal numbers indicate that Saint Bernard's student population is growing at a 7.8 percent clip during the past five years, faster than any school in the Diocese of Norwich during that span.

Macrino, who has been in his position at Saint Bernard since July of 2014, credits a combination of factors for the enrollment uptick. Primary among them is the Hendricks Challenge, a five-year plan started in 2014 and engineered by benefactor Maureen Hendricks, in which each consecutive year she would donate $200,000 if donors and the diocese could match her contribution.

"We've just completed really significant renovations from the Hendricks challenge," Macrino said. "We've been able to essentially remodel the entire academic part of the building, including the gymnasium and the cafeteria. That just makes a much nicer impression, I think, when people visit the school."

Hendricks's visit to the school about seven years ago prompted her to donate money to upgrade the facilities. An alumna of the Class of 1972, Hendricks sought to spruce up the school, which was built in 1967 and has been renovated infrequently since. The challenge is now over, but it ended up raising $3 million to modernize the facilities.

Admissions directors Cathy Brown and Kim Hodges, Director of Advancement Dana Williams and Macrino answered questions about Saint Bernard's growth Monday afternoon. Beyond being able to bring students on more impressive tours now, Macrino said Saint Bernard's strength is spiritual.

"There's a spiritual underpinning, and I do think that a lot of parents who are looking for kind of a welcoming, warm environment for their adolescents, there's a certain appeal when that's one of the elements that you can offer," Macrino said.

That said, he notes that you don't have to be Catholic to attend Saint Bernard. Members of any religious denomination, as well as the irreligious, are welcome. School officials said they hope to open Saint Bernard to more people regardless of economic strata. Now that the school has been thoroughly renovated, Saint Bernard's next overarching goal is to further efforts to help families with tuition.

For the 2019-20 school year, tuition is $8,400 for grades six through eight and $13,500 for grades nine through 12. To date, Macrino said, the school has given about $910,000 a year in financial aid. These monies come from different organizations and individuals. The Norwich Diocese continually helps with tuition. The rest is funded through scholarships, charitable foundations and private donations.

"Tuition assistance is really one of the most important challenges for us, and it will be the focus of our next major initiative that will continue to support those students who wish to come but perhaps can't afford the full tuition," Macrino said.

The significance of Saint Bernard's robust enrollment is amplified by some of its recent struggles. Macrino said, as Brown, Hodges and Williams chuckled, not to be gentle: in its heyday, about the 1970s, the school had upward of 1,000 students. When the Hendricks Challenge was made official in 2014, Norwich Diocese Bishop Michael J. Cote told a crowd of students, parents, alumni and school staff that when he first came to the diocese in the early 2000s, "there were rumors the school would be sold or closed."

Although he doesn't take credit, Macrino's tenure at Saint Bernard has coincided with its emergence from the Great Recession. He was hired as interim headmaster after leaving his position as principal at Waterford High School. His role was soon made permanent, and he has no plans of leaving in the immediate future.

Instability at the school because of transitory administrators, a struggling economy and changes that weren't in keeping with the legacy of the school, Macrino said, hurt Saint Bernard before he came on in 2014.

"It really did cripple the school," he said. "There were some incidents in the past that led the community to believe that Saint Bernard was not long for this world."

But, Macrino and other school officials said, this is about the time Hendricks came to the rescue. School leaders subsequently met and moved to push Saint Bernard back to "the values and standards that make us so dear to the community," Macrino said. "And through the grace of a higher power, it's worked."

s.spinella@theday.com