Catholic schools – not just surviving, but thriving, amid pandemic

Success stories in classrooms across the archdiocese

At the beginning of the 2020–2021 school year, Gwen Rodrigues, principal at Immaculate Conception Regional School in Mount Vernon, thought, “The Lord seems to be on our side.”

The previous year, the school had started a laptop program for fifth- through eighth-graders. So, when COVID required the school to offer only distance learning, educators were able to send their upper-grade students home with up-to-date technology.

There were challenges. Some students did not have adequate internet connection at home, while others had no quiet place to work and learn. Teachers started to notice that some students were disengaging or not showing up at all to their Zoom classes.

Rodrigues credits the creativity of her teaching staff for the idea of opening up the school’s gymnasium as a quiet, socially distanced space to learn, with free wi-fi. And Rodrigues personally visited the home of each student who was atypically absent. She brought them their schoolwork packets, and offered use of the gym.

“What everybody wants is consistency, predictability,” Rodrigues said. “COVID doesn’t lend itself to that. I’ve got a remarkable staff here who have been very flexible and very resilient and committed to their mission.”

Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Seattle returned to in-person learning much faster than public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, they have not just survived the challenge, but have thrived. Schools have built waitlists, held record-setting fundraisers, and experienced myriad miracles of grace.

Keyword: Pivot

When you ask Catholic educators to describe the past year, the word they use most often is “pivot.”

For most, that meant starting the school year in September 2020 with a remote-learning program, then breaking students into cohorts to visit campus at different times, then ramping up to bring each grade to campus in a slow, steady march until they were all on campus at the same time.

Pam Schwartz, principal at St. Catherine School in Seattle, dizzies even the best scheduling mind when she describes how kindergarten through second-grade students were brought back to campus in October 2020, third-graders came back in November, then the fourth- and fifth-graders were on-site in January, and the middle-schoolers entered a hybrid model (both in-person and online) in February.

“Pivot” refers to toggling between different modes of learning: remote, in-person, or a combination of the two.

One consistent challenge has been transportation. Schools that previously offered busing have had to suspend it due to the difficulty of maintaining COVID precautions onboard. That’s particularly difficult for schools like St. Cecilia on Bainbridge, which has 35 percent of its students living off the island, and Immaculate Conception Regional School, which serves students from three counties and as far away as 60 miles from campus. Principals at both of those schools say that, nevertheless, every student is making it to class thanks to parents making long drives — a testament to how important families feel it is to have their children in their classrooms and with their peers.

Protocols, protocols, protocols

Have Catholic schools in Western Washington experienced cases of COVID?

The answer, broadly speaking, is no.

There have been isolated cases — a staff member who contracts COVID but does not come in contact with kids, or the family that tests positive over Christmas break — but several principals said that the protocols they’ve put into place have prevented further spread.

“Our families have been really vigilant about adhering to the guidelines,” said Pam Schwartz in Seattle. “It’s a team effort.”

The guidelines are what you might expect. All students and faculty wear masks. Families fill out online forms each morning attesting that no members of the family are experiencing COVID-like symptoms. If anyone in the household has a symptom, the student stays home. Additional protocols require that students maintain 6 feet of distance while in school — a challenge that many schools have accommodated by expanding into parish halls and gymnasiums. Schools have also staggered lunch and recess times to prevent too much mingling between grade levels.

At St. Cecilia, protocols led to the evolution of the usual morning greeting. Principal Susan Kilbane greets every student with what she calls a “heart hello.” As a student emerges from the family car, she and the student raise their hands to their hearts, looking one another in the eye while maintaining distance.

“You couldn’t have the school open without the cooperation of the students,” Kilbane said.

The protocols allowed Catholic schools to open to in-person learning while neighboring public schools continued online-only learning.

Meanwhile, Catholic schools have seen their enrollments and waitlists swell. According to Kristin Moore, director of marketing for the archdiocese’s Office for Catholic Schools, St. Benedict School in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood has a waitlist for the first time in a decade, and Seton Catholic College Preparatory High School in Vancouver had its highest-ever freshman enrollment.

“We’re not just treading water,” Moore said. “There’s lots of good we’re experiencing.”

At St. Catherine in Seattle, the new families are “definitely non-Catholic, from public schools,” said Principal Pam Schwartz. The new families often knew someone already attending St. Catherine, she said, and they simply want their child to have an in-person education.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for Catholic schools to bring in new families and expose them to the church,” Schwartz said. “I hope they see the benefits and that they choose to stay. It’s kind of our time to shine.”

Principals collaborating

Another unexpected positive outcome of navigating education during a pandemic is the increased camaraderie among Catholic school principals.

At COVID-19’s onset, the archdiocese’s Catholic schools office set up daily virtual meetings for principals to discuss everything from remote-learning software to infection rates in their communities to how best to construct Plexiglas desk dividers. Those meetings continue, three times a week.

“Collaboration among principals has been instrumental,” said Rodrigues. “As a principal floundering, we lean on each other for research or ideas.”

At Queen of Angels School in rural Clallam County, principal Thomas Cody McDonald said in previous years he’d sometimes felt remote and isolated from the rest of the archdiocese. “Building up collegiality among the principals, rather than just meeting a few times a year — that’s actually been one of the very positive experiences.”

Kids in the classroom

Jennifer Arthur, the third-grade teacher at St. Catherine, said the relative normalcy of being back in the classroom has been healthy for her, as well as for her students. She can see their mental health improving.

“They are doing so much better,” she said. “They get to be with their friends at recess. They’re able to be kids more in the classroom than being online.”

Her class returned to in-person instruction in November, and by the beginning of the year, all her students were in class except for one. Jett Clack remained the lone Zoom participant, his face projected onto a big monitor in the classroom.

“When we found out the rest of his class was going back, it was bittersweet,” says Jett’s mother, Katie Clack. Jett has a health issue that makes him, perhaps, more vulnerable to the harsher effects of COVID-19. “We just knew we couldn’t send him back. The repercussions of if he were to get sick were just too much.”

But after months of online learning, Clack noticed her son experiencing what she called “major Zoom anxiety” and waning academic confidence. The family consulted with Jett’s doctors, who said they’d seen no kids getting overly sick and no kids hospitalized with COVID. They told her the benefits of being in school outweighed the negatives. Katie, who works in health care, also saw that St. Catherine was “taking all the necessary precautions, and then some.”

So, in mid-February, Jett Clack walked back into a classroom after nearly a year away. His teacher remembers it well.

“The students, they did a double-take,” Arthur said. “The joy of seeing this one kid come back in person — their faces, their giggles, their excitement. It was such a heartwarming thing to see.”

The Clacks said they have not once regretted their decision to send Jett back to in-person learning, and that he is confident and excited about learning again.

“I do feel very lucky that we were already a part of this community and they were able to make in-person school happen,” Clack said.

Northwest Catholic – May 2021