The line was not quiet during a recent telephone interview with Saint Albert the Great School Principal Ed Vittardi. In the background and from his open office window, children could be heard at recess playfully shouting and noisily chatting outside. It’s exactly the noise Vittardi wants to hear.
He recently released a letter to school families alerting them that classes will remain in-person and face-to-face despite recommendations from the county to transition to remote learning. When making these decisions, Vittardi always aims to serve the best interests of his school community (which also includes Saint Albert the Great at Assumption Academy in Broadview Heights, where Vittardi serves as head of school. Rick Kaliszewski is principal).
Remaining in-person isn’t a diocesan decision, but an individual decision backed by diocese support. Every Catholic school is locally controlled for decisions like this, Vittardi said. His ruling to stay face-to-face comes with much collaboration with his school advisory task force and Saint Albert the Great Church Pastor Edward Estok. The Wallings Road school has had less than 10 cumulative student and staff cases of Covid-19. Assumption has had zero.
“To make the best decision for our kids I felt I had to be as educated as I possibly could,” Vittardi said of his efforts since March. “We started many months ago with our school advisory task force that’s a good cross-section of folks… doctors, parents, business folks, a staff member, a therapist; it was and continues to be a collaborative process. My decision ultimately came with the collective collaborative knowledge of some really good people.”
Four “significant areas of consideration” went into Vittardi’s decision to remain educating in-person and face-to-face according to his letter to school families: local spread, staff member to staff member spread, staff increases in substitute teachers and building health/safety protocols.
“We know there is a much lower infection rate for children than adults,” Vittardi said. “Are we seeing student-to-student transmission and no, we haven’t seen that. We also have not seen student-to-staff transmission. We’ve not seen concerns with staff-to-staff transmission because of our protocols. In some schools there are a number of staff infected and our protocols were established to keep our adults as separated as we can. We have three different lunchrooms for our adults. We cannot replace them… our staff, they are too valuable, so we have many staff protocols in place. We keep everyone at a distance. We watch staff attendance and our ability to replace them. We increased our substitute teaching staff because we didn’t want our teachers to be concerned about missing school. We also made it a policy that if they are absent for illness or for being overly cautious that we are not charging them sick days for that.”
Students, too, have protocols to follow and their efforts have been nothing short of outstanding, Vittardi said. Families also have been wonderfully supportive.
“I think our parents have been outstanding. We are a school community and the decision that every family makes does impact our school,” Vittardi said. “Our partnership with Purell and GOJO has been helpful. Our kids are constantly Purell’ing and all of our doors are open all day to avoid touch-points. We have a new ventilation system we’ve added so that windows are open to keep air moving and we’ve had more classes outside than ever before. I told our staff if we have a staff case, if we’re doing everything right, then that would be the only staff member involved.”
Vittardi said he’s never been prouder of a staff and student body, adding that Pastor Edward Estok has opened the church hall to students during the day as well, doing “everything possible” to keep kids in school.
“With all of the things that are inconveniences, they want to be here so bad that they will do these things,” he said of students wearing masks, distancing, among other protocols in place. “Our parents want them to be here in school, and our teachers want to be with our kids. The pressure we feel is what can we do to make that happen for them.”
Vittardi remains focused on his individual school communities and looks to the Governor’s office, the Ohio Department of Health, the Ohio Department of Education, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health and the Diocese of Cleveland for guidance, he wrote in his letter. The letter, released Nov. 19, can be viewed on the school’s Facebook page.
“I don’t question what other people do. I ask what’s best for our school community,” Vittardi said.
But sometimes, decisions can be hard to make, like the recent canceling of CYO sports.
“That gave us the best chance of keeping our kids in school every day,” he said. “The hardest part of all of this are the things we haven’t been able to do. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I knew we would lose our playground for a year and it forced me to put our kids in the parking lots for recess and now I hear their joy and their energy and I hear kids just being kids. I love being around kids. This job was really tough last spring with no kids… not hearing any kids.”
He went on to say that school attendance is the best it’s been in any recent year.
By SARA MACHO HILL
Contributing Writer