Where will Blessed Sacrament students go?

With two months left in the school year, most parents of Blessed Sacrament School students have decided where their children will be going next year. The 53-year-old Valley Stream Catholic school will close its doors at the end of June.

Holy Name of Mary School, on the other side of Valley Stream and the only other Catholic school in the village, will be taking in many of Blessed Sacrament’s students. Lesley Souvenir, whose son, Jordan, is in seventh grade, said that Holy Name of Mary was the only other school she considered. “I wanted him to stay with some of his friends,” Souvenir said. “Quite a few of them are going to Holy Name.”

Grace Plackis also said that Holy Name was the only option for her son, who will be in seventh grade next year. He already has several friends there from Boy Scouts and other activities, and several of his classmates will be transferring there. “I wanted it to be a nice transition for him,” Plackis said. “It’s still in Valley Stream.”

Esther Oliveira’s daughter, Hayley, is also in seventh grade and will miss out on completing her education at Blessed Sacrament by one year. Oliveira said she and her daughter looked at several other Catholic schools in the area before settling on Holy Name of Mary. The principal at Holy Name, Richard McMahon, was warm and welcoming, Oliveira noted. Additionally, the school is close by and Hayley will have the chance to stay with some of her friends.

An option Oliveira said she didn’t consider was public school. “I wanted to keep her in Catholic school,” she said. “A Catholic education is very important.”

Oliveira added that she will enroll her son, Zachary, in kindergarten at Holy Name next year.

Denise Kassebaum, Holy Name’s enrollment coordinator, said she already has 310 students registered for next year, with several more pending. That is up from this year’s student population of 290, which includes a soon-to-graduate eighth-grade class of 25 students. Overall, Kassebaum said, Holy Name has picked up 42 students from Blessed Sacrament, nearly one-third of the students being displaced.

“We do have a warm and welcoming school,” she said.

Not all of Blessed Sacrament’s students will be moving to Valley Stream’s other Catholic school, however. Lisa Scognamillo has said that her son, Peter, will attend Our Lady of Lourdes in Malverne for his final year before high school. He is the only one from the current seventh-grade class who will be going there, Scognamillo said.

“We’re sticking with a Catholic school education,” she said. “That’s always been a priority for us.”

The students at Blessed Sacrament, especially the seventh-graders, have been on an emotional rollercoaster since the Diocese of Rockville Centre announced in January that the school would be closing. Oliveira said that her daughter was disappointed. Souvenir described her son as being in denial at first. And Scognamillo noted that her son was very upset when he heard the news.

But those emotions eventually turned into acceptance. Scognamillo said that Peter quickly realized that going to a different school would be an opportunity for him to make new friends. Describing him as a “glass half full” kind of kid, she said she is proud of how is handling the change. “He was able to put it all in perspective,” she said. “He wants to put a positive spin on it.”

Peter is in the Student Council and Rosary Club at Blessed Sacrament, and is also a church altar server. His mother said he has no doubt that he will get involved and fit right in at his new school. Plus, she said, he may well reunite with some of his friends from Blessed Sacrament in high school, because he wants to go to Chaminade like his older brother.

Souvenir expressed a similar sentiment. “They only have one year left,” she said, “so they’re talking about reuniting in high school.”

She did say that Jordan is disappointed that there won’t be an eighth-grade yearbook at Blessed Sacrament, documenting the students’ school careers up to this point.

Plackis said that the closing might be toughest on her three other children, two of whom have graduated from Blessed Sacrament and one who is graduating this year. It’s been a tradition to go back and visit the school during vacations, she said, but they won’t have that chance anymore.