From hurricane to pandemic, one Belle Harbor school perseveres
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Kids at St. Francis de Sales Academy are learning through Google Classroom, Zoom and other educational apps. Photo courtesy of Chris Scharbach
By Victoria Merlino
Catholic churches and schools across Queens are closed in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, causing massive disruptions in the daily routines of thousands of borough residents. Though few could have foreseen a pandemic of this magnitude hitting New York, one Belle Harbor school was more prepared than most.
The St. Francis de Sales Academy is no stranger to hardship. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy ravaged Belle Harbor and the rest of the Rockaway Peninsula, bringing massive flooding, fires and destruction to the beachfront community.
For months after the storm, regular school life was on pause, and the academy served as a relief center for the neighborhood, Principal Chris Scharbach told the Eagle,
Since then, the school has made contingency plans for the next disaster. Now, with the COVID-19 crisis, they are acting on those plans — including a strategy for remote learning.
“It’s a difficult time,” Scharbach said, adding that no one in the school has yet tested positive for COVID-19. “What makes our school slightly unique is that our school went through the same thing with Hurricane Sandy.”
The school moved to remote learning on March 16, the same day New York City public schools officially closed for classes.
In the school’s kindergarten through eighth grade classes, each child has their own electronic device — for younger kids, it’s an iPad, while older kids each have a Chromebook that they can take home each night.
When the school began distance learning, all children took home their electronic devices. Teachers and students have begun to communicate via teleconferencing on Zoom, Google Classroom and other apps. The devices are all also able to connect to the Sprint WiFi network, which is important for some students who do not have adequate internet access at home, Scharbach said.
“The interaction level increases as the kids get older,” Scharbach said, noting that older kids are able to sit for longer class periods online, while teachers of younger kids might post shorter videos and other supplemental material to keep students engaged.
To continue students’ religious education, the school will use My Catholic Faith Delivered, a long-distance religious learning program that Scharbach said might usually be used to teach students who live far from a church.
Throughout the city, the move to distance learning hasn’t been as smooth for all schools, with an uneven distribution of tech and supplies proving a challenge for the public school system especially. “We’re not going to have 300,000 devices by Monday — we never said we would,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said last week, according to Chalkbeat.
Scharbach said both parents and school staff have been extremely supportive as the school moved online.
“I think the teachers have gone above and beyond,” he said, noting that the school hasn’t missed an instructional day.
Overall, the school wants to provide a stable foundation for the kids in an uncertain time. This week, for instance, St. Francis de Sales will hold its first completely virtual mass as a school, streamed on Facebook Live.
“We want that to be as normal as it can be in an abnormal world,” he said.
