And on the 21st day, there are gifts for seniors at Kings Park HS

Once a month in Kings Park, a group of parents — often joined by the high school principal, Jason Huntsman — fans out across the hamlet to deliver small gifts to the homes of more than 200 Kings Park High School seniors.

They have so far organized three dropoffs of desserts and one, last Sunday, of Queens Botanical Garden tickets and decorative stones. They plan to keep it up through graduation in June.

It is an effort to brighten a year that in Kings Park, as in most every public school district on Long Island, lacks some traditional highlights. Homecoming and Senior Banquet were canceled, as were some class trips; prom was still uncertain as of last week. Until full-time in-person school resumed Monday, it was hard for some of the seniors to see friends they’d known since kindergarten.

Two mothers of seniors, Cynthia Grimley and Jennifer Brojer, came up with the idea in late December.

"Is it perfect? No, but I feel as if we’re making a little difference, and if they smile a couple minutes, look forward to what they’re getting," it’s a success, said Grimley, who works in higher education disability services.

They talked with Huntsman, who supported the idea. "It’s a little thing to let them know we’re thinking of them," he said. "Their journey has been atypical but it’s still their journey and we want them to appreciate it and celebrate it as much as they can."

For privacy reasons, Huntsman couldn’t release students’ home addresses, so Grimley and Brojer started by making an online signup sheet for the families of all 251 high school seniors. About 220 families have opted in, a response rate that Huntsman enviously noted was "off the charts." Many of the remaining seniors pick up their gifts at school.

Grimley and Brojer assemble the gifts, then turn to a rotating group of 60 parents and a route-planning app to make deliveries. Some gifts are more labor-intensive than others: For February, Brojer, a homemaker and baking enthusiast, took it upon herself to make 251 hot chocolate bombs, the dessert of the moment, in her kitchen.

"It’s a sphere where you have dark chocolate filled with hot cocoa mix and mini-marshmallows rolled in peppermint to hide the seal," she said.

Brojer made these in batches of 15, because that was all her molds would hold, and each batch took about 30 minutes to make. Recounting the effort, she said: "It sounded like a lot until I got involved, and then it was really a lot."

In separate phone interviews, Declan Cumming and Joy Witzke, seniors and student council members, said the chocolate bombs were delicious. They said they take the gifts in stride, just as they have the year’s less pleasant surprises.

Playing pick-up football last Sunday, Cumming and his friends talked about making a group trip to the garden. Witzke and her friends sometimes do a group text on the 21st of the month, delivery day.

"It doesn't replace all the social interactions and events we're missing out on, but it’s definitely nice that throughout all this, people are still thinking of us," Witzke said.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.