A shoutout to Catholic Schools

It’s a sunny winter day in Rockport. Sacred Heart School offers Pre-K to 5th Grade classes, and the younger children play outside. More and more classes come together for their “Hats off to Catholic Education” event – at 10 am, all their hats fly high!

When Hurricane Harvey hit in August 2017, the school building was completely destroyed. Kathy Barnes, the principal, will never forget those days: “We asked ourselves, should we just give up? There was almost nothing left. But I felt that God wanted a Catholic school here.”

At the beginning of 2018, they started school in provisional buildings – the former gym served now also as the cafeteria and teacher’s lounge. Little by little, the students came back.

Catholic School Week is a time to celebrate. On Friday, they celebrate a special Appreciation Mass with a reception in the Church for the donors and volunteers, and the children prepare a Talent Show in the evening. Yesterday, they celebrated a Baby Shower for the Gabriel Project: “Every student brought something for newborns or mothers. It is a way to understand how precious life is.” And on Thursday is grandparents’ day.

Despite the simple buildings, the love and dedication of the staff made the classrooms beautiful. The school has a library (“all the books were gone after Harvey) and a computer lab: “Miraculously, most of the computers survived. We brought them to our house and stored them until we reopened again,” says Barnes.

The certainty that God wanted a Catholic School in Rockport kept her and her staff going. Financial support comes from the Secondhand store “Castaways” in Rockport, which is staffed by volunteers from 7 churches. And God sends His help: “We needed to buy new Social Studies books and decided to buy the new edition for the 5th graders – we didn’t have more money. Then we got a call from someone at the store, ‘I think we have something for you.’” When she came to the store, there were boxes full of the social study books she wanted to order – they arrived as a donation, shipped from Houston. “There were all the grades besides 5th grade….” It was like touching God’s love with your hands.

The principal hopes that the groundbreaking for the new school building will happen soon. “I still want to work in it and enjoy it a bit,” she says. And more dreams are coming – “Maybe one day, we can add a Catholic Middle School.”