If Father Maguire had been determined to acquire his own church, Father Earley was set on starting his own school. John E. Tynan, who was to be one of the first students in the school, has written his recollections of the all-out building campaign. "Father Earley's efforts to secure funds for the project were so continuous and so determined that people remarked that 'he would have been a great success in Wall Street'." Somehow or other, he secured an old house, which he had moved to a location directly in back of the church. With the help of local carpenters and other craftsmen, he transformed the old building into a workable school with grades from kindergarten to the fifth.
 
A small  contingent of Franciscan nuns arrived from Peekskill to do the teaching, and was quartered in the annex which also served as the Sunday School. With 50 pupils enrolled, Father Earley opened the new parochial school on January 6, 1908.
One difficulty, then as now, was transporting pupils who lived beyond walking distance to the school, particularly those in "Dublin'.' To solve the problem, James Butler, a well known, wealthy grocery store entrepreneur living in Eastview, donated a horse and flatbed wagon. Good weather or bad, the children from Dublin were carried back and forth to school in this  wagon,  which soon became a local institution. One of the youthful drivers was John Tynan himself.
 
Recalling his school days, Mr. Tynan tells us: "There were no buses, no hot Iunches, no supervised play, no psychologists or psychiatrists, no school nurse - and yet we all survived'.' They also had fun. One of the delights of winter, he recalls, was sledding during recess, starting up on the Stearnses' hill, where the high school now stands, and coasting down toward Broadway.