The original wooden building is gone; it has grown from first through fourth grade to kindergarten through eighth; the student body has grown from the 90 that first year to a present enrollment of 250; and tuition is no longer $2 a year.

An all-class reunion is scheduled for May 21 on campus, and alumni are already recalling their experiences there.

When Margaret Lukes Rezowalli, class of 1936, started at St. Leo it was shortly after the school re-opened.

Although the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur started St. Leo in 1915, they were forced to close the school in 1925 when their order decided to leave San Jose.

It re-opened in 1927 when the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary agreed to take over. They stayed though 1985, when declining enrollment numbers forced them to leave and a lay faculty took over.

Rezowalli remembers the BVMs, as they were called, and more.

"When I went there, the bathrooms were outside in sheds. The school had single wall construction so it was really cold in the winter. There were great big stoves in every classroom, so if you were lucky you sat near the stove," she says.

The janitors treated the wooden floors with preservative oil each year and Rezowalli recalls "our knees would be black for a while after kneeling.

"We had two grades for every room and there was no kindergarten then. The first- and second-graders were together and third and fourth and so on," she says.

Teachers handled it by assigning reading or writing work to one grade while working with the other, she says.

Rezowalli remembers when the playground changed for the better.

"When I was around sixth grade someone donated a slide. That was a major event. All the kids in the school lined up and went down the slide, one after the other. The older children in seventh and eighth grade thought that it was beneath them to be running down the slide, but the rest of us thought it was the cat's pajamas."

Double classes were gone but double desks were in place when Michael McDonald, class of 1953, started at St. Leo in the fourth grade. His sixth grade was the first to move from the original wooden building into the new one, and when he was in the eighth grade the new church opened.

Like many alumni, McDonald has vivid memories of the nuns who taught at St. Leo.

"Sister Mary Jamesell was my eighth-grade teacher and she liked boys. Most of the nuns didn't like the boys. She was a tiny little thing," he says.

Tiny as she was, McDonald remembers the day Sister Mary Jamesell "knocked me out," he says. "I lied and the whole class lied for me."

His transgression was lighting a match while he and the other boys in his class were on stage in the gym practicing for an event. The curtains were drawn and he says he did it for light.

When the curtain opened, the nun asked each boy if they did it and each one denied it.

"I had to leave early because I was on the traffic squad and when we were in the ante room, Bob Peters asked me why I didn't tell her and I told him I was scared," he says.

Sister overheard and she socked McDonald, who says, "I went against the wall and down onto the floor.

"She was stunned and went up to our classroom crying. So we all hung around to apologize, but she wasn't coming out. I went in and apologized and everybody was right behind me and that was the end of it.

"She was a neat person."

Tim Muller, class of 1964, remembers when Sister Mary Agneta put the students' IQ test scores up and pointed to the different percentiles and told the students who would succeed and who wouldn't.

"I'll never forget it. She said, 'Mr. Muller, how are you ever going to college?'

"I said, 'I'll get an athletic scholarship,' and she said, 'Mr. Muller, you can't always depend on your personality in life.' "

Muller went on to earn a graduate degree at Santa Clara University.

Cindy Fahrner, who is chairing the all-year alumni reunion, attended St. Leo through the fourth grade in the late 1960s. Now her son Zachary Medjoubi is enrolled in third grade at St. Leo.

Even when she was in school, the nuns were strict.

"I remember getting in trouble for trading lunches," Fahrner says. "Sister Mary Agnes Loretta was so mean. I loved raisins and there was an eighth-grader who would trade her raisins for cookies."

Fahrner says as she talks to alumni about the reunion, "there's always nun stories and how that has shaped people's lives. Most survived the nun thing. I don't think it was the best part of the experience."

One alumnus with positive nun memories is Daryle Lupretta, who graduated in the early 1980s and still lives in the neighborhood.

"Sister Pauline was the principal when I was there. She was a tough cookie but a great lady. She taught me how to do my handshake," Lupretta says.

"She said, 'If you can't do a good handshake, don't bother putting your hand out.'

"At confirmation when I gave the bishop a strong handshake, I think it surprised him. He reached down, put his arm around me and gave me a big hug. To this day, I always make sure I have a good handshake," Lupretta says.

The school's annual fiesta is also a source of many memories.

Tom Pulchny, the current vice principal at St. Leo, has researched the school's history and he says the event "was very well attended and featured visits by renowned Hollywood stars, including Bob Hope, Jane Russell and many others."

McDonald says he remembers Bing Crosby performing one year.

Pulchny, who didn't attend St. Leo, has a very direct connection to the 1947 fiesta, when a new "Home of Tomorrow" was raffled off.

"It was six tickets for $5 or one for $1 for the house, which was worth $20,000 and was located on Shasta Avenue," he says.

While Pulchny doesn't know who won the house, he and his wife bought it in 1996 for $280,000, a year after he started working at St. Leo. It wasn't until later that he learned of its connection to the school.

Alumni are in agreement on one positive aspect of the school--the sense of community engendered by St. Leo.

Jim Bottini, a 1960 graduate, says, "It was a wonderful little campus. Very simple, very direct and a very pleasant time in history. The closeness of our particular class was kind of cool. Some I've stayed in touch with."

McDonald maintains records of his class of 1953 and in September 2003, he organized a class reunion. Of the 44 classmates, 30 came to the reunion held on campus. McDonald says there are another six or eight who have died.

"About a dozen of the guys have been good friends and we get together two or three times a year," McDonald says.

Fahrner says it was St. Leo's "sense of community" that made her decide to send her son there.

"It's a small community of about 200 families that is culturally diversified," she says. "As I'm putting this alumni organization together, that's the theme that resonates with everybody: that sense of community and how it formed their lives and who they are."

St. Leo the Great School All Years Reunion is 5 to 10 p.m. May 21 at the School, 1551 W. San Fernando St. Tickets are $45 and advance reservations are required. For additional information or to make reservations, email stleoalumni@hotmail.com or call 408.260.1672.