High school seniors stepping up amid virus pandemic
Capital Region graduates turn end of academic year into service during outbreak
This time of year, high school seniors would normally be preparing to walk the graduation stage and accept their diplomas.
When COVID-19 swept into New York in mid-march, schools were forced to close and cancel all public gatherings. Commencement events in the Capital Region are up in the air.
While students are missing out on the exciting milestones of senior year, many in the class of 2020 are using the end of their final year of high school to help families who are less fortunate and front-line workers whose lives have been upended.
On the day school was canceled, Kini-analysa Mccalmon’s thoughts went to often-ignored communities. Since March, she and her family have been collecting hand-made masks from nonprofits and handing them to families living in poverty in the Schenectady’s Steinmetz Houses and the Hamilton Hill neighborhood.
“Some families had eight people living in the house, but they only had one (single-use) mask. They were using it so much that it was visibly very dirty,” she said. “It’s not safe or good for their
health or their family’s health.”
Mccalmon, 16, is an early graduate of Schenectady High School. She credits her “headstrong” mother for pushing her to excel in school and eventually skip 11th grade.
With the help of Saratoga
Sews and the C.O.C.O.A. House at Union College, Mccalmon, her sister and mother have handed out more than 400 masks to families in need. Mccalmon knows their struggles firsthand; she and her family were once homeless and they lived in low-income housing in Hamilton Hill when she was a toddler.
She said she has warm memories of the people there but knows many view these communities in a negative light, and she wants to use her relative privilege to make their lives better.
Families she spoke to were eager to talk to someone, particularly school-age children. Many lacked phone and internet access and said they couldn’t get in contact with their teachers. Many had responsibilities caring for siblings or parents or were living on their own.
“I think in those communities, people are so used to not getting anything and they don’t really know who to ask, so they try to fend for themselves,” she said. “They were really surprised that we came and gave the masks for free.”
Mccalmon is graduating with half of her credits toward an associate degree at Schenectady County Community College. After a year, she hopes to transfer to Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.
Since the end of March, Owen Ball, a 17-year-old Columbia
High School student, has been making hundreds of face shields on his personal 3D printer and donating them to front-line health care workers.
Ball, valedictorian of the class of 2020 and part of East Greenbush’s nationally ranked science olympiad team, was contacted by a family friend about Northeast Face Shields Project, which was organizing volunteers to use 3D printers to manufacture the masks and distribute them to regional hospitals.
“It just feels like I have the supplies to do it, which is more than most people have, so I felt an obligation to work on this,” Ball said. “Not many people have a printer they can use for recreational use.”
When the East Greenbush district heard about his efforts, it loaned Ball a second 3D printer so he could produce even more. Ball monitors the machines, which produce hundreds of masks a day, through an app on his phone.
“The nature of 3D printing is there are quite a few things you have to try to get right ... but once you get it working it stays pretty consistent,” he said.
Ball plans to major in electrical and computer engineering when he attends Carnegie Mellon University in the fall.
Angelina Bolio, 18, is a senior at Albany High School who has been working with children with disabilities throughout the crisis.
Bolio will attend Hudson Valley Community College in the fall and hopes to become a nurse, like her mother, who cares for children with physical and mental disabilities at Saint Margaret’s Center in Albany.
During the year, Bolio and her peers at Albany High School’s Best Buddies program pair up with children who have physical or mental disabilities and organize events for them to “enjoy the same things other kids can enjoy.”
Bolio is also an ROTC leader at school, which she said has helped her connect with her father and grandfather who were in the military.
“I grew up with a strong foundation, a strong sense of discipline,” she said.
Now that school buildings are closed and children are stuck at home, Bolio and her peers check in with their “buddies” by phone and organize weekly videoconferencing events. At last week’s Google Meet, she said, all the kids had smiles on their faces.
“It was a really great time for them and us, getting to know that the kids are OK,” she said. “It’s important to keep your sanity under control when you are locked in the house... being able to talk to someone, in general, it’s a way to keep yourself under control.”
Bolio worries about how the children are managing in quarantine and how they are affected by the sometimes violent clashes between police and protesters unfolding in the streets of Albany, part of the national unrest around the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Many of the children she works with are sensitive to loud noises.
Bolio said she is upset about not having a traditional graduation ceremony but recognizes that there are many children who are worse off.
“I’m going to be different than all the other graduating classes. All I can say is I made it through during this virus, at least I was able to get my diploma,” she said. “But there are other people suffering for whom graduation is not their number one priority right now.”
In some districts, high school seniors pooled their resources to help people harmed by the pandemic. In Bethlehem, the entire graduating class, 398 students, asked family members and friends to donate blood in their honor, recognizing a shortage at local health care facilities.
The students also donated $10,000 they had raised at the homecoming dance last fall and spirit wear sales to the South End Children’s Cafe and the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce Small Business Hardship Fund.
“I have tears in my eyes,” South End Children’s Cafe director Tracie Killar said, in an email to senior class adviser and Bethlehem teacher Jessica Westervelt, when notified of the funds headed to the Albanybased center. “What a beautiful and heart-wrenching donation!”
The senior class at Duanesburg Junior/senior High School voted to donate $4,000 of its senior fund to the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York to help local people in need.
“It just feels like I have the supplies to do it, which is more than most people have, so I felt an obligation to work on this.” “Not many people have a printer they can use for recreational use.”
— Owen Ball