From the bayshore of Monmouth County, to the barrier islands of Ocean to the pinelands of Burlington and Mercer, the hard hit Catholic school communities of the Trenton Diocese continue to scramble to adjust to what has come to be thought of as the “new normal.”

In badly battered St. Rose High School, Belmar, and the adjacent St. Rose (Grade) School, that translates to modifying the schedule and rearranging the space while they reach out to reassure and counsel kids and families affected by the storm.

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Just a few miles down the road in St. Denis School, Manasquan, also severely affected, the emphasis is much the same with the bottom level of the school off-limits and the kids re-routed to the upper floor.

In afflicted areas such as northern Monmouth County’s bayshore and the coastal communities of Ocean County which not only span the narrow barrier islands but frame them, the focus is on helping families who have lost so much.

In Mother Teresa Regional School, Atlantic Highlands for instance, 15 families either lost the first floors of their houses or their entire home and three teachers lost the first floor to their homes.  In All Saints Regional Catholic School, Manahawkin, which draws many of its students from the flood plain of southern Ocean County, many families are still reeling from the destruction of their homes, and school has become a safe and stable harbor for them since it reopened one week after the storm.

Reaching Out, Gathering In
Creating a safe harbor for the students and, by extension their families, has been the focus of the diocese’s  Catholic schools since Hurricane Sandy hit, Oct. 29 with administrators, faculty and staff – often victims of the storms themselves – continuing to dedicate their efforts to making the best of the situation.

JoAnn Tier, diocesan superintendent of schools, said that while all affected schools had re-opened by Nov. 19, an initial assessment revealed 12 grade schools and one high school – St. Rose – sustained either damage to their school buildings or their school community. Further information is forthcoming, Tier said and damage reports are due Nov. 30.

Surveys the diocese requested from the schools in the days following the hurricane and the nor’easter that struck Nov. 8, revealed a wide range of consequences that ran the gamut from serious damage of school facilities to loss of property by many families and their displacement, Tier said.

Indeed, the last two schools re-opening their doors to students – St. Denis School, Manasquan and St. Rose High School, Belmar, which re-opened full-time  Nov. 19 are still in the process of repairing and restoring their facilities as is the grade school which re-opened Nov. 15 after losing a large portion of the roof.

With Courage and Faith
Coral Butler Brooks, director of institutional advancement in St. Rose High School, and Bill Roberts, principal of St. Rose (Grade) School, sounded optimistic notes about what has been accomplished where the campus is concerned in under a month.

By now, the story of recovery in St. Rose High School has become legendary, including the quick- including the quick-thinking decision to hire the contractor already in town to pump out municipal facilities, to do the same for the campus – including St. Rose Church – which sits squarely in the middle of the down town area.

“There was up to 9 feet of water in the building,” Brooks noted. “The church was flooded. Some 800 pounds of fish were removed from (the high school) and five large turtles which were alive in the building, were returned to their habitats,” she said.

Brooks said the high school lost the use of seven classrooms, the chapel, the cafeteria and faculty lounge, all of its administrative offices, technology, advancement, finance and admissions offices.

“The water in the main office was waist deep,” she said “and we had no power for 22 days. The force of the water entering the buildings was so strong that it blew out all the walls in the red brick building on the campus where art and music programs are held.”

Despite these desperate circumstances, the school community forged on, working together toward the cleanup. “We had 500 volunteers including alums, some of whom hadn’t been here in 20 years,” Brooks said. “Everyone wore the school colors –purple and gold. After our cleanup, you could see all these people in our colors helping people throughout Belmar. It was really awesome.”

In order not to lose more school time than necessary, school opened on an abbreviated schedule Nov. 13 with some innovative programming, including a retreat in Monmouth University, West Long Branch, chaplain of the Catholic Centre, there who had previously served as chaplain for both St. Rose schools.

There have also been some additions. Three giant trailers in the parking lot are filling in for the damaged science labs and others classrooms right now. 

Roberts spoke of the “extreme resilience” of the children and the teachers of St. Rose Grade School. “We were closed for two and a half weeks,” he said. “Our last school day was Oct. 26 and we didn’t re-open until the 15th of November. We have full days of school but,” he said, activities are still limited by the circumstances, which include the fact that the roof has yet to be fully repaired.

“We have a tarp up there for now,” said Roberts who added that a complete damage assessment is underway and he expects to learn soon when construction can be done.

“We’re operational within our school building but there are things we are not able to do,” he said. For instance, lunch is a brown bag meal in the classroom with parents coming in to help so that teachers get their breaks.

In St. Denis School, damaged by two feet of water, the bottom floor is still off limits. “We are still in the process of cleaning and reconstructing,” said principal Trudy Bonavita. “But the children seem happy to be here and happy to see each other.

“I think everyone is glad for some type of normalcy,” she said.

“Some of the children are living with relatives and friends. We are the one constant …we’re having a Thanksgiving Mass for them (Nov. 21) and on their first day back, we practiced the new evacuation routine so they would know the exits.”

Bonavita said that there is no time table yet for starting the process that will restore 11 classrooms, the science and computer rooms and pre-k and kindergarten and the kitchen that were so heavily damaged by the storm and its aftermath.

The kids are brown bagging their lunches because of the damage to the kitchen and cafeteria and art and music programs travel to the classrooms by cart. There’s a makeshift nurses station in a stairwell, but, the rebuilding process is underway and in this time of Thanksgiving, she said, that’s something to be grateful for.

One Step at a Time
The devastated families that the storm left in its wake will be suffering from Sandy’s after affects for a long time, said Melissa Whelan Wisk, principal of Mother Teresa Regional School in the Atlantic Highlands section of the Bayshore and Sister of St. Joseph Jeannette Daily, principal of All Saints Regional Catholic School, Manahawkin, just across the Manahawkin Bay Bridge or causeway from the heavily flooded Beach Island area.

In both of these areas, as in many other barrier regions, the need for temporary housing is overwhelming and the schools continue to help in any way they can. Mother Teresa Regional had a counselor and a play therapist come to its PTA meeting Nov. 14 to talk to the parents about things to look for that might indicate their children are showing signs of stress.

“Many of our families have lost everything,” she said.  People who have had to re-locate are also dealing now with the burden of lost jobs or longer commutes and FEMA at the same time, she said.

“What we are doing is taking it a step at a time,” said Wisk.

In All Saints Regional, school has been open since Nov. 5, said Sister Jeannette. “The main reason was that the children needed to come back into community. We were able to talk about faith, family and friends.

“I really think the children understood the situation better than we give them credit for,” said Sister Jeannette, who noted that the school is holding a “craft and care day” from 9 a.m. to noon on Dec. 1 so that the parents can leave their kids in a safe place while they spend some time taking care of their property.

She worries about the effect the coming Christmas season will have on parents already sorely financially stressed and hopes that people “understand that they don’t have to buy out Walmart to make their kids happy.

“We have a lot of people down here who have money but a lot of people are renters and in some cases, they live on the mainland and work on the island,” so, she says, they may have lost their jobs as well as their homes.

Still, she takes heart from what she has seen from the community thus far. “I’m very edified by the goodness and understanding I have seen from the broader community.”