The name of Our Lady Star of the Sea School in Solomons seems fitting, because it is located on a scenic, peaceful spot overlooking where the Chesapeake Bay meets the mouth of the Patuxent River, on the southern tip of Calvert County in Maryland.

But in a recent interview, Jennifer Thompson, the principal there, reflected on another beautiful view that she witnessed recently at Our Lady Star of the Sea School, as students returned for the first days of school after being apart for almost six months during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It’s hard to put into words. It was so joyful to see the little kids, big kids, returning kids, new kids all coming back, and the building coming alive again,” she said.

Like other Catholic schools across the Archdiocese of Washington, Our Lady Star of the Sea School reopened after extensive planning and by adopting strict coronavirus safety protocols.

She said the school community worked together to make that safe reopening possible.

“Really and truly, the only way this is going to work is if we have everyone’s support,” she said, praising the cooperative effort of the pastor, Father Ken Gill; teachers; parents and students.

Father Gill agreed, saying, “It’s been a real team effort.”

Also like other Catholic schools in the archdiocese, the teachers at Our Lady Star of the Sea School had transitioned to distance learning for students over one weekend in mid-March, after campuses closed and public Masses stopped as safety precautions against the spread of the coronavirus.

But this past spring Our Lady Star of the Sea School faced an added challenge, as its level of enrollment paired with the COVID-19 economic downturn threatened the school’s future.

Father Gill said that the school community, “after many prayers to our patroness, Our Lady Star of the Sea,” decided not to close the school, because “the future of our children was too important… to give into the darkness of that moment of the pandemic.”

The school then formed groups to plan its academic programs for the fall to offer in-person and virtual learning for students, and also to adopt needed safety protocols and technology. Teachers participated in extra training to adapt to the school’s new learning model.

Meanwhile, some families took the initiative to put up billboards along roadways in Calvert and St. Mary’s counties inviting students to attend Our Lady Star of the Sea School, and they also used social media and word of mouth to promote the school.

“When we started doing open houses, there was tremendous interest in the community,” the pastor said.

When Our Lady Star of the Sea School opened its doors in August, its enrollment had increased by one-third, from 103 students in June to 136 students now. The priest said some of the new students haven’t been baptized or received their First Holy Communion yet, so now they can receive those sacraments at school Masses.

“When you say ‘yes,’ the doors stay open to all kinds of possibilities, especially when we say ‘yes’ to our Lord and ‘yes’ to our Lady,” said Father Gill, who added that he is “firmly convinced with every fiber of my being, these are favors received from Our Lady, our patroness.”

The priest noted how parishioners had prayed St. Louis de Montfort’s special 33-day consecration to Mary around Aug. 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which Our Lady Star of the Sea celebrates as its parish feast day. This summer, parishioners also began walking through the neighborhood together praying the rosary on First Saturdays.

Father Gill said the happiness he felt when Our Lady Star of the Sea reopened during the last week of August “was second only to when we reopened for public Mass on Memorial Day.”

That week of Aug. 24-28, the school opened in a staggered way, with pre-kindergarten students starting that Monday and Tuesday; kindergarten, first and second graders that Wednesday; third, fourth and fifth graders that Thursday; and sixth, seventh and eighth graders that Friday.

Thompson said that was done “to give everyone, our students, parents and teachers, the opportunity to get used to our new protocols in small groups.”

The principal explained that those protocols include mandatory mask wearing for students and teachers. As children arrive for school each morning, they have their temperature checked, and parents have to answer a series of questions, including whether they have been exposed to the coronavirus, have symptoms, and if they have traveled to another state recently or been with someone visiting from another state. Parents or outside visitors are not allowed in the building.

“We make sure they (the students) have their mask on, and it fits well before they enter the building,” she added.

Once inside, students report directly to their classroom, where they have classes and eat their lunch instead of gathering together in the cafeteria. Signs along the hallways remind students to keep a social distance from each other. In addition to having hand sanitizer available for students, the school installed touchless soap dispensers, and the drinking fountains have been replaced by touchless water bottle filling stations.

Rather than gathering together in the church for morning prayer, the students stay in their classrooms and pray together via Zoom.

Our Lady Star of the Sea School even had to adapt its buddy program partnering older and younger students. Now they can’t sit together at Mass, but they’ve been assigned as prayer buddies, and plans are for them to read to each other from their classrooms using their iPads, and they can play outside together at a social distance, kicking the soccer ball or playing street hockey.

“We had to think outside the box,” Thompson said.

Inside classrooms, desks are six feet apart. To serve 20 virtual learners at Our Lady Star of the Sea School, teachers are using Google classroom to connect with those students in the fourth through eighth grades, so they can “attend” live classes with their classmates at school while they are learning online. For the school’s virtual learners in pre-kindergarten through the third grade, teachers are sending those parents three videos each day covering math, language arts and religion classes.

“It’s been a lot for the teachers. They’ve been awesome through it all, (doing) a lot of extra work to accommodate both our virtual and in-person learning,” the principal said.

Thompson said that students have “mask breaks,” after a couple of classes, going outside and maintaining social distances.

Our Lady Star of the Sea School is also making use of its grounds, with an outside patio set up as a classroom, a large tent providing another outside classroom, and with middle school students sitting on blankets for classes on the lawn overlooking the water.

“We’re very blessed to have the campus we do. It’s beautiful, and it affords us the space to have the students outside as much as possible,” the principal said.

But with all the changes at the school, much remains the same. Third grade teacher Maggie Quade noted that, as in other years, she will emphasize multiplication, building independence, and descriptive writing projects for her students, such as inventing a monster and writing about it for Halloween.

Quade, who attended kindergarten through the eighth grade at Our Lady Star of the Sea School and is in her sixth year teaching there, said she tries to emulate the caring example of her third grade teacher, Trish Barrett.

“I knew I could go to her for anything… I want to create the same atmosphere for my students,” she said.

The third grade teacher said she remains friends with classmates she met there in kindergarten.

As Our Lady Star of the Sea School reopened, Quade said, “It was like getting the family together.”

That point was echoed by Father Gill at the school’s Sept. 9 opening Mass in the parish’s expansive church, where the students at social distances from each other.

“We have not been together as a school family since March,” he said, later adding, “…You are part of a very special family. You are part of God’s family here at Our Lady Star of the Sea.”

Thompson also underscored the family spirit there, noting that like a true family, everyone there – teachers, parents and students – worked together to reopen the school. Now in her 16^th year at Our Lady Star of the Sea School, Thompson served as the school’s interim principal last year and became principal this spring, after earlier teaching middle school and the second and fifth grades there. She also taught at Holy Angels-Sacred Heart School in Avenue and St. John’s School in Hollywood, Maryland.

She knows the value of Catholic education firsthand, not only as a principal and teacher, but as a student. She grew up in Southern Maryland and graduated from Father Andrew White, S.J. School in Leonardtown and in 1982 was in the first graduating class of the merged St. Mary’s Ryken High School, also in Leonardtown. 

Thompson said helping students “develop their faith and develop that relationship with God and strengthen their prayer life,” is important every school year, but “especially in this time of pandemic, when they can put faith over fear.”

Since 1933, Our Lady Star of the Sea School has been educating generations of students at its scenic location beside the water. In 2020, that school community came together in a challenging year, and Thompson said that as classes resumed there, it felt like “the family has been back together again.”