Interview with the superintendent: Science and faith

The superintendent of Hawaii’s Catholic schools says that, with a year’s experience with the pandemic, Catholic campuses across the state are doing a ‘great job’ teaching students in a safe environment

Interview by Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald

The Hawaii Catholic Herald spoke to the superintendent of Hawaii Catholic Schools, Llewellyn Young, in early August via a Zoom video call due to rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in the state.

You’ve been in the superintendent job for a year. Obviously, the pandemic, has been a big part of that. But what would you say stood out to you in the first year on the job?

There are so many things. The pandemic, of course, is a huge factor and issue in my job altogether. It overwhelms everything because we’re constantly shifting throughout the school year. Although, as we look at our protocols and procedures in all of the [Catholic] schools across the state, there were just little tweaks here and there between the protocols from last fall to this fall in the reopening. Part of the reason is because, while we do know a lot more about the virus and how it spreads than we did at that time, we still want to make sure our campus communities are safe. We’re still just tweaking slightly here and there.

And we have a new player in the mitigations and that’s vaccination. And so now we want to try to incorporate that into our processes. But we have to be very careful because [the diocese] doesn’t require vaccination. We’re really trying to create universal policies in all the school campuses, regardless of your vaccination status, to make sure that the campus communities are safe. It can be a challenge, but we’ve already been through this and we have a lot of resources and guidance, including from the Department of Health.

I think the schools are doing a great job in just making sure that their campus communities are safe. You’ve got confidence from the teachers because they’ve been through it already, confidence from their administrators, but most importantly, you’ve got confidence from the parents that they know how to handle these things now, how to keep their children safe.

Do you think the bishop will be requiring any sort of vaccine mandate for Catholic school staff?

Not at this point. Anything could change. Vaccination is still not a requirement for the state broadly. So, Bishop Silva is being very cautious about this. He never wants to take away personal choice. The diocese stands on the idea that currently with the vaccines, it is a personal choice of an individual whether or not they want to be vaccinated. We encourage all adults to get vaccinated, but at the same time, we respect the fact that it’s a personal choice.

Do the schools report the number of staff vaccinated?

Because we don’t require it, the schools aren’t really asking. A lot of the teachers have come forward and volunteered that they’ve been vaccinated and so the schools can get a roundabout figure. I think we have more individuals who are vaccinated than not who are teaching in our schools.

Where do enrollment numbers stand for Hawaii Catholic schools for this school year?

For the majority of our K-8 schools, they have seen an enrollment increase, especially in the neighbor islands and those schools that are outside of metropolitan Honolulu. St. Michael’s in Waialua, they’d been under 100 students for a long time and now they’re over 100. St. Theresa’s on Kauai has a record number of students. They’ve been teetering around 100 students for almost the last decade. And now they’re around 160 students. So that’s phenomenal. They actually have to open up new classrooms so they can fit in more students. It’s an issue, but it’s a great issue to have for them. St. Anthony’s in Maui has an increase this year as well.

We do see that the larger schools didn’t experience that same surge. In fact, many of them saw small declines in their enrollment, and it’s for a variety of reasons. There is definitely a financial sector involved in that. The larger schools tend to be a little bit more expensive. Given that we’re going through a pandemic, given that some people still are out of jobs and the financial future of so many is so uncertain that is a factor, I think, for many of the larger schools.

Do you have a plan to help these schools retain the increase in enrollment once the pandemic — hopefully — fades away?

We’ve been doing a lot of marketing. I keep saying that this pandemic has been a blessing and a curse to Catholic schools. It’s been a blessing in the sense that we were able to open up last fall. And we’re able to open up again this fall with a higher level of confidence than we did last fall because of a variety of things. We saw the increase on many of our campuses in enrollment throughout the year. The challenge is how we’re going to keep these families here and make sure that they’re happy with the quality of education that they’re experiencing at our schools.

The schools themselves went out and surveyed these parents. They really made it difficult for the families to leave by getting the families involved and letting them know that being part of a Catholic school is more than just sending your kids to school. We want to involve the whole family as appropriate. I mean, this is a pandemic, but we still want to involve the whole family in the educational experience of the child because we’re looking at the whole child. That is something very unique and very special. And those families that brought their kids in, for the most part, what we’re seeing is they love what they’ve seen, they’ve loved what they’ve experienced and they’re keeping their kids in school.

I had some nice reports from St. Joseph’s, Waipahu, who said that all of the new kids that came in were retained except those relocating out of state. They loved the education they received. They loved the school community and how their children were experiencing Catholic education. So that’s what I was hoping for, and that’s what’s happening in most of the schools.

Some of these parents were coming from the perspective of wanting their kids at in-person school. A lot of them I’m sure thought they were just going to do this in the interim and see how things go. And at the end of the school year, they might switch them back over to public school. And fortunately for most of our schools out there, that didn’t happen. They were very happy. I heard some positive things coming out of St. John Vianney in Kailua. Parents were very pleased with the quality of that education. They saw that it was a bit of a sacrifice but it’s worth it, and they’re keeping their kids in Catholic school. That’s wonderful.

St. Anthony in Kailua has had to add classes to several grades. That’s just incredible.

I keep coming back to that challenge that we posed to all of our schools just before we opened up last fall: Show us how you’re going to thrive, not how you’re going survive. And our schools have done that. They’re thriving in the pandemic. And I hope and pray that they continue to do so even as we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this pandemic.

On that topic of thriving, do you have examples of innovative ways schools did try to engage the students and parents during this pandemic?

Online distance learning was an option as we entered into the fall semester last year for some families. It still is, but it’s very limited because we really want to try to get the kids back. We know we can do it safely in person and we’ve done it for an entire year. We’re really urging parents to send their kids to school and engage safely in in-person instruction.

We were very serious about addressing learning loss. We did not want to see our kids slip because they were engaging on an online learning platform. We wanted to make it as rich of an experience as possible, and our teachers were so innovative in their thinking, in creating a very live, active and engaging online experience. A lot of money went into that at all of our Catholic schools to try to enrich and enhance that platform.

We’re not just an academic institution. We are a ministry of the church. So that religious nature, that spiritualism, that mission that we have to spread the word of God and to help students build relationships with Jesus, that is just as important if not more important than our academic mission, because that’s what makes us very special.

Anything else you’d like to mention?

We started off last year by recognizing that faith and science don’t have to conflict, and that was my big message. Hawaii Catholic schools are a testament to that, and I hope that all of the rest of Hawaii recognizes what Catholic schools were able to do during this pandemic, which was to give a quality educational experience and spiritual experience to all of our students out there without learning loss.

Many of our schools enhanced their curriculum and challenged the kids more because we were all in this together. The kids had to do their part on their respective campuses to ensure the safety of everyone else. They were able to do service learning by creating drives for the homeless and caring for those out there who were more at risk during the pandemic.

So I hope that the community sees all of those things that our schools were able to do and recognizes there’s truly something special going on at Hawaii Catholic schools. We invite anyone out there who is interested in exploring what we’re about to come and see us.

This interview has been edited and condensed.