About 15 boys and girls, some in blue-and-gold plaid skirts, all with school crest-emblazoned polos, gather in the back of the city council chambers. The students, all from Holy Family Catholic Academy, wait patiently for about 30 minutes as Mayor Daniel Henkel reads a proclamation recognizing Catholic Schools Week in Niceville from January 25-31.
After Mayor Dan Henkel reads the proclamation, he hands the document to Holy Family Catholic Academy Principal Felisha Carnley. Carnley wasn’t expecting the job last spring when a group of Catholic families decided to leverage the school choice scholarship funds available and open a school at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church. She started on the curriculum committee as a parent volunteer with years of teaching experience. As the curriculum developed, the search for a school leader began. She served to find that person. As other options did not work out, someone suggested she should do it. She took the mantle of leadership and says it’s blessed her life.
“I had a very small vision, one I never expected to be the principal. I expected to help put together a curriculum, and I expected the principal to come. I was definitely converted in my decision and my plan, God had a big hand in that, but I also didn’t expect for this community to be as rich as it is, and so my hope is that my own vision continues to grow and that I continue to say yes to God, but also that we continue to move forward to strengthen the family and the community,” Carnley said.
Carnley graduated from Troy University and taught for 15 years in the Okaloosa County School District. Ten of those years were spent as an ESE teacher.
On the day of our interview, Principal Carnley leads me into her office – just off the entrance to the church gym. Its cinder-block walls are painted dark blue or gray. The room’s structure, dark paint, and deeply grooved walls suggest it was a utility closet before it was repurposed.
“There’s my window,” she laughs, pointing to a picture across from the door that shows a beach, as we sit down to talk about the school.
While the school teaches Latin and eschews iPads and other technology-assisted instruction, Carnley explains from her desk that the key to this school’s long-term success takes place at 8 AM on Mondays and Fridays, when the student body attends Catholic Mass in the church.
“I can absolutely see in our mission, where we hope to infuse every single classroom with Joy and a passion for faith and curriculum that it truly is outpouring from our classrooms, our students are internalizing that they are not just learning for now in the future, but that they are eternal souls, and that they’re able to better their lives through their faith. So truly, the transformational missionary portion of this ministry has been the blessing that I’ve been able to see.”
So far this school year, four families have decided to become Catholics – a journey that started for them when their kids entered the hallways last August.
“I expected the transformation as far as a trickle-down of information into our students’ hearts. But, full family conversions so quickly, I didn’t expect that.”
The School has taken up residence in the religious education building on the campus of Holy Name of Jesus Church on Valparaiso Boulevard.
The classroom wing has started to fill with students for the four grades already offered. Next year, the school plans to provide fourth- and fifth-grade classes. Lunch is in the gymnasium. Students are expected to clean up after themselves, and I watch as a couple of them wipe down the tables after lunch.
In the back, there is a small playground, and beyond that, a vast field. The field, which is church property, could host middle and high school buildings – and possibly even host a football stadium in the future. It’s all a matter of fitting the needs of a small school and a larger church onto about ten acres.
Inside the room are large windows with a view of a field in the middle of the campus. In the distance is a statue of Pope St. Pius X, who emphasized the institution of weekly communion, for those of you who were wondering.
Students’ art hangs on some of the walls. Other walls have hundreds of books. Big whiteboards fill one wall in each classroom.
But it’s what isn’t there that parents, teachers, and students would argue is most important. There are no tablet docks. One computer for each teacher is in the classroom. No TVs or other screens. No plaque regaling visitors about the school’s partnership with big tech firms.
He says the school has blessed the parish. On a personal level, the horde of excited, energized children zipping around the school and the church campus has brought new energy to the priest.
On another level, it’s meant a renewal for the parish as well. “You know the phrase is, ‘if you come to a parish and all you see is a bunch of old folks leave because it’s a dying parish, you come to a place, and you see lots of kids running around, it’s alive.”
But with that growth, comes expenses. The school has a plan at this time to serve students from Kindergarten through eighth grade, but that costs money. The other Catholic School in Okaloosa County, St. Mary’s in Fort Walton Beach, is already bursting at the seams with 400 students, according to the leadership team at HFCA.
That means building in Niceville to provide a more central location for students from Crestview or Freeport as well. Construction means fundraising. “A middle school, conservatively, I would bet, would be five to six million,” Father Voyt guesses. That means more fundraising for the mission. “It’s always a challenge. It’s like, where is the money going to come from?” Father Voyt says, “You know, I don’t have million-dollar donors in this parish. It’s a lot of working class, but they have always been very, very generous. But it’s like, ‘how much can you go to the well?’ You don’t want to burn people out.”
Heather Helton sits in the grotto near the front of Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church. It’s a cold, sunny morning, and she’s dropped off all her kids at their schools around Niceville.
Several of them go to Ruckel Middle School, but her younger ones attend Holy Family Catholic Academy.
It’s a sacrifice to get her kids to several places every morning – but one she says has been rewarded in the five months she’s had her children there. “As a parent, seeing them grow in their faith, seeing them grow in their studies, it really has pushed me to want to do better,” she said. It’s encouraged her as she works to become a better Catholic Christian.
Holy Family Catholic Academy started in August of 2025 with about 40 students in kindergarten through third grade. Already, the parents’ guild says it expects significant growth when the 2026-7 school year begins – based on the feedback, more parents want their kids to have a Classical Christian education in Niceville.
“Here, this school is like a family. It is very welcoming. And you know, for me personally, I have to speak to the fact that it is a Christian school. It is a Catholic school. It is not separate. It is central to their curriculum. It is central to their daily schedules. Prayer is part of it, conversation around the Bible, learning about the Bible, learning about who Jesus is, having a personal relationship that’s not separate,” Helton says, “It’s very central to their everyday life. The classrooms are smaller. You get more one-on-one attention. Personally, though, these teachers have gone above and beyond to teach the subjects very well. They’re very intentional… they show them dignity by teaching the subject, being intentional about what they teach and how they teach it. [They] also adapt to what each child needs. And I don’t think that that sometimes is something that public school can afford. They just don’t have the time, they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the space. One teacher, 30 kids. It’s just not possible. It’s not possible to be as individual with each child as it has been here.”
At the end of the day, while the school explicitly strives to give the best, holistic education to its students, the goal is not success in this world. It’s learning sacrifice and love are synonyms – that driving to multiple schools every day is an act of charity, officing in a dark room while building curriculum and managing a startup school in a predominantly protestant or unchurched community, and struggling while learning new and unfamiliar skills are all ways to worship God.
Students at Holy Family Catholic Academy will celebrate their first-ever Catholic Schools week with a series of events that include a pep rally and a visit from Bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee’s Diocese, William Wack.
If you want more information about Holy Family Catholic Academy, you can learn more here.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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