The building and site were bought by the Society of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart (The Josephite Fathers and Brothers), to whom the operation of the school was entrusted.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans placed the school under the patronage of St. Augustine of Hippo, a pre-eminent Christian and scholar of Africa, and a Father of the Church.

[citation needed] From its inception the school was intended for the education of young men from black Catholic families of New Orleans.

Adds Charles McCarthy, director of a cooperative effort by the Ivy League schools to spot bright, underprivileged students: "St. Augustine produces high-quality candidates who don't disappoint the colleges once they're admitted."

Peter Briggs, a freshman admissions officer at Harvard, finds St. Aug boys "interesting, constructive guys."[4]St.

Equipped with state-of-the-art technology, it is intended to ensure that St. Augustine students remain competitive in a technology-driven society.

The school, including its recently built business and technology wing and its band room, received flood damage.

Throughout its history, St. Augustine has maintained a tradition of strong discipline, previously achieved in part through the use of corporal punishment.

[4] The school's founding principal, Fr Matthew O'Rourke, SSJ has said that the discipline instilled by what he called the "Board of Education" was important because learning could not go on without it.

[14] Basketball star Hollis Price, who attended the school in the late 1990s, states that he got paddled for talking in class, "on the court, everywhere", and that his "aching backside" taught him the value of discipline.

On February 24, 2011, a four-hour "town hall" meeting was held in the school gymnasium, at which students and alumni mounted an "impassioned defense" of corporal punishment, stating that it had been valuable for them in teaching that there are consequences to actions.

John Raphael, SSJ objected to the archdiocese overruling the school's own board and said that the issue was about the rights of African-American parents to educate and discipline their children in their own traditions.

[22][23] In the 1978 championship game, the first to be played in the Superdome, the Knights defeated Catholic League rival Jesuit 14–7 in front of a crowd of 42,000.

[24] The story of the school's 1965 basketball team being the first to play in an integrated game in New Orleans is featured in the 1999 movie, Passing Glory.