Here are excerpts from the Red Mass talk by Llewellyn K. Young Jr., Superintendent of Hawaii Catholic Schools, delivered Jan. 18 in the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, Honolulu.
By Dr. Llewellyn K. Young Jr.
Superintendent, Hawaii Catholic Schools
This story begins in March of 2020, an infamous month and year for all of us. At that time, the then Superintendent and my good friend, Dr. Mike Rockers called me to his office for an extremely important meeting. We needed to finalize our pandemic planning. He had already asked all schools if they were ready for distance learning as it seemed inevitable that we would shut down. This Giant Goliath of a situation, the pandemic, was going to impact our schools, and we needed a planned framework on how we were going to respond. When we asked the schools if they were ready for distance learning, they responded with a resounding and confident “YES.” They were ready! But we went further. Dr. Rockers and I set a directive for all parochial schools in Hawaii. The directive was, “Show us how you are going to thrive in this pandemic, or show us how you’re going to close.” There was no in-between. Show us how you will thrive or show us how you will close. We did NOT ask them to show us how they were going to survive. Those were the only two options.
All Catholic School administrators took this directive VERY seriously. There were a couple schools that knew that while they might survive the pandemic, they were not going to thrive, and as a result, they closed. Another school asked to give them a year as they tried earnestly to create plans to thrive, but alas, they ended up closing as well.
We all went to work. The Hawaii Catholic Schools office wanted to provide the most recent and updated scientific guidance from local and national resources, but we also needed to start with our faith. That’s why the first stone that we threw to this Giant was PRAYER. The first part of our official guidelines to all Catholic schools emphasized prayer. We asked all schools to continue to pray for healing, understanding, wisdom and knowledge about the virus and how we could effectively respond.
Then, we addressed the SCIENCE, the second stone. Scientific guidelines and recommendations for campus readiness: masking, physical distancing, hand washing, cleaning and sanitizing, defining bubbles or cohorts, etc. from our partners at the Department of Health. And each school needed to figure out how these guidelines would be applied on each campus as we know that no two campuses are alike.
The third stone we threw was a layered PLANNING STRATEGY with multiple plans of response, Plan A, B, and C, and if needed D, and so on. We asked to see the different plans for reopening in the fall 2020. Our priority was to open for in-person classes, but if that was not possible for all students, effective alternatives needed to be ready and they were. Now, you can imagine the magnitude of this initiative. Preschools have their own guidelines from the Department of Human Services that they need to follow. Elementary schools have different scheduling patterns and classroom set ups than middle and high schools and they had to customize plans to fit their needs.
This was a monumental task, but I can report to you that, with the fourth stone we threw of FOCUS and DETERMINATION, the grand majority of Catholic schools across our state opened effectively in the fall of 2020 for in-person instruction. Now, they did this with tremendous care and caution taking every recommended mitigation and strategy very seriously recognizing that their plans needed to be dynamic yet firm enough to keep their campus communities safe. Our schools approached this with humbleness and humility recognizing and appreciating with empathy that other schools were not able to open in the same way for a variety of reasons, and our hearts went out to all of them. When we prayed, we didn’t just pray for Catholic schools, we prayed for all schools and all members of our communities on all islands.
That fifth stone that is still keeping the Giant at bay is one of DUE DILIGENCE. At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, we saw a total of just over 30 cases of COVID among all Catholic schools contracted by staff and students, but all of these cases were contracted off campus. We were fortunate, that with their due diligence, not a single case could be definitively attributed to contracting the virus on any of our campuses during that school year. When it seemed that the world was a bit more relaxed with COVID restrictions, our schools got tougher to protect their campus communities and ensure the health, safety, and well-being of staff, students, and their families.
Now, the big difference between the gospel story for today and my story is that, for us, the Giant is still alive. He changes with different variants, causes confusion and division, strikes when you least expect it, and is basically relentless. However, our schools do their best to plow ahead doing everything they can to keep people safe. Because of their due diligence, we saw, for the first time in 14 years, a significant upturn in enrollment this school year with a net gain of 288 students aggregated across all Catholic schools. Another important aspect is that from last year to this year, we kept the majority of students that came from other schools by making them a part of our Catholic schools’ Ohana. Our schools have led with faith, science, love, wisdom, compassion, understanding and innovation staying true to our mission of evangelization, being witnesses to Jesus, and stewards of the Gospel.
In the end, we give credit to our Lord! We acknowledge that He MUST be at the center of everything we think, say, and do! Our schools planned with the purest intention to keep people safe and to thrive, but we didn’t know exactly what the outcomes would be. There is still so much uncertainty with this pandemic, but the Lord saw us through, and he is at the heart of our successes.