In less than a year, Stella Maris Academy will mark 70 years of Catholic education in La Jolla. The school on Herschel Avenue, which teaches students from TK (Transitional Kindergarten) level to eighth grade, opened on St. Patrick’s Day in 1947. Stella Maris is the parochial school for adjacent Mary, Star of the Sea Catholic Church, which opened in 1906 and has been at its present Girard Avenue location since the 1930s. The academy’s current enrollment runs between 170 and 180 students, not just from La Jolla, but from as far away as Chula Vista to the south and Carlsbad to the north.