At many LI private schools, in-person learning still the norm

Many private high schools and middle schools on Long Island are doing in-person instruction for all students five days a week, in contrast to most public schools, turning running tracks and wrestling rooms into classrooms as they adapt to the COVID era.

Some private schools are seeing record demand for spots from parents who want their kids in school every day, and they're backing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s call to rely on infection rates in each school instead of blanket regional rates in deciding whether to close them.

Many of the schools opened in September not knowing what to expect in an unprecedented situation but have been surprised, and even delighted, that they have been able to pull it off with few shutdowns.

"Every day I was like, ‘Lord, thank you for another day.’ What we suspected is absolutely true: Kids want to be on campus. They put up with our rules," said Joshua Crane, head of the Stony Brook School, which has 420 students in grades 7 through 12 including 100 boarders.

Brother Thomas Cleary, president of Chaminade High School, an all-boys Catholic school in Mineola, has converted part of an indoor track into a classroom where he teaches a senior religion class.

Now, on the spot where sweaty runners used to sprint by, Cleary delves into questions about the existence of God and St. Thomas Aquinas.

"We’re thrilled we’ve been able to open the school and keep it open and have a fall sports program and activities after school," he said. "We’ve learned to pivot as we need to pivot."

Besides the track, Chaminade has also turned a wrestling room into a classroom.

Chaminade has accepted a record 30 transfers this fall as parents seeking full-time, in-person instruction flock to the school, he said. Normally Chaminade does not accept any transfers, but it made an exception because of what Cleary calls an "educational crisis."

Few public high schools or middle schools on Long Island are offering in-person instruction five days a week, according to state data. Instead, in a "hybrid" model students typically attend school in person two or three days a week and study online the other days.

More public elementary schools are doing five days in person, but many are not.

All 35 Catholic grammar schools are providing five-days-a-week in-person instruction, said Cleary, who also heads the Morning Star Initiative aimed at strengthening the schools. Those schools generally run from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Some private schools are taking extraordinary steps to keep their doors open amid the pandemic.

Harbor Country Day School in St. James tests every student and staff member once a week for COVID-19 using the same saliva test the NBA used for its players this season, said John Cissel, head of the school, which teaches children from pre-K to eighth grade.

The 150-student school has had no positive COVID-19 test results since it opened.

Like many private schools, Harbor keeps its students in "cohorts," or groups that have no contact with other cohorts. They remain in the same classroom for the day, with teachers coming to them.

At Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, the maintenance staff pushes carts down the hallways every night with non-ozone-producing UV lamps that kill any virus present in the air, said Brother Kenneth Hoagland, principal of the 2,600-student school.

Private schools' offering of daily in-person instruction parallels their efforts back in March, when many quickly shifted to live instruction by teachers over videoconferencing platforms like Zoom. Often students followed their regular daily schedules.

Most public schools on Long Island were far slower to offer such classes in the spring, if they did so at all.

The experiences demonstrate what Hofstra University Professor Alan Singer called a "two-tier" system of education on Long Island.

Because they are tuition-driven, private schools must meet the demands of parents, he said. They think "if you’re not going to provide five days, we can go to the public school or we’ll find a private school that is willing to give us what we want."

Liz Genovesi is one of those parents. After her family found out in the summer that their son Tucker, 17, would be attending East Hampton High School in-person only two days a week, they enrolled him at the Stony Brook School.

They decided to have him repeat 11th grade since he had missed so much of his junior year, as teachers did little live instruction over Zoom or Google Classroom.

They also weren’t happy that the public school was offering limited or no sports, since Tucker is an avid baseball player.

Now the centerfielder is boarding at Stony Brook, playing baseball regularly, and thriving.

"Wanting to graduate with his peers [in East Hampton] was kind of out of the window because he wouldn’t have even been in school with half of his peers and not being able to do any of the stuff that makes school fun for him," Genovesi said.

Many private schools like Stony Brook can do in-person full time because they had fewer students in each classroom to begin with, often 16 or fewer. They also often have more space. Stony Brook has 55 acres and 15 buildings, Crane said.

His school did shut down for a week this month but reopened after Suffolk County health officials changed their protocols for contact tracing. The school has record enrollment this year, bolstered by families seeking full-time in-person instruction, he said.

Hank Grishman, superintendent of Jericho public schools, said most public schools simply cannot fit all their students into their buildings at the same time and keep them safe by socially distancing. Jericho High School, for instance, has 1,250 students in one building.

"Go back to pre-COVID and walk into Jericho High School during class pass and it’s like sitting on the subway platform at 42nd Street during rush hour," he said. "There is not enough space we could rent in order to bring the kids in every day."

So instead, half the student body shows up for class each day, while the other half stays home to study. That has cut class size in half to an average of 12. His district does have elementary school students studying in-person five days a week but had to hire 16 additional teachers. The district also turned art, music and science rooms into regular classrooms. Jericho has had no COVID-19 cases originating in its schools.

Some private schools are succeeding even with larger class sizes.

Sacred Heart Academy, an all-girls Catholic High School in Hempstead, averages 23 to 25 students in a classroom, and desks are not always six feet apart, said Kristin Lynch Graham, president of the 864-student school.

But they have had only one confirmed case of COVID-19.

Graham says "buy-in" from families pledging to respect social distancing, mask wearing and other mandates outside of school as well as inside was critical to their success in keeping the school open in-person full-time with no interruptions.

Private school families, of course, make a financial sacrifice to send their children there. Annual costs can range from about $11,000 or more at most Catholic high schools to $38,900 at independent schools such as Friends Academy in Locust Valley. Catholic grammar schools cost roughly $5,000 a year, and sometimes less with financial aid.

Cuomo has suggested that New York City, instead of using a citywide threshold of 3% positivity in COVID-19 testing to shut down its schools last week, look at the level in each individual school to make that decision.

Many private schools agree.

Cuomo’s proposal "would be a lifeline to schools that would be shut down by a blanket policy," said Stony Brook’s Crane. Schools should be open as much as possible since "research shows that when protocols are followed, school environments are not major areas of spread, and the effects of social isolation for young people do way more harm than good."

Meanwhile, private schools on Long Island are doing everything they can to stay open. The Buckley School in Roslyn has erected a tent on its grounds to allow students to go outside for lunch.

As the weather turns cooler, the schools has added portable heaters.

"It’s easier for us to be very nimble and flexible, which is key to making this work," said the school’s headmaster, Jean-Marc Juhel.

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