Creative initiatives are key to emerging from the pandemic to educate students well.
By Judy Roberts, EWTN News, 7/7/20
Register correspondent Judy Roberts writes from Graytown, Ohio.
When the coronavirus closed classrooms across the country, Immaculate Conception School in the Bronx not only made sure students would continue learning from home but reached out to their families with wellness checks and support for those suffering losses.
Such a response, replicated around the nation, is what often makes Catholic schools anchors in their communities. As Immaculate Conception Principal Alexandra Benjamin told a recent Manhattan Institute forum on “Education after COVID,” “These schools need to be in their communities serving. Once they leave, they won’t be back.”
Benjamin’s school, which serves students in the country’s poorest congressional district, will reopen in the fall, but more than 100 other Catholic schools will not. Unable to withstand the effects of the prolonged coronavirus shutdown on already-fragile resources, they are closing their doors permanently, causing some to question whether America’s Catholic school system will survive. ….