Mt. St. Mary Academy: A Catholic School Community Based in Faith and Gratitude

Mrs. Dina Rubino remembers being at Mt. St. Mary Academy on March 13 last year and putting together packets with the other teachers as they prepared for distance learning. They didn’t know what the following week or weeks would look like.

“It has been my pleasure to be part of an institution that, when given the pressure to adapt, we were able to do that on a dime for our students,” Mrs. Rubino says. “I am so proud of what we have accomplished, and when I think of the sisters who started this school over 160 years ago, I know they went through so much more than we have.”

Mt. St. Mary Academy has provided our community with Catholic education since the middle of the 19th century. This commitment to community and continuity testifies to the spirit of the school.

“Our commitment to the community was to be in school for five full days a week, and once we made that commitment, we made sure we did everything we could to keep it,” says Principal Edee Wood. “In our community, we have a lot of first responders, and it’s important that they know we’re supporting them as they support us.”

After finishing the 2019-20 academic year through distance learning, Mt. St. Mary Academy welcomed students back to in-person education in August 2020. Since then, they have pivoted frequently according to evolving mandates from the state of California and the Diocese of Sacramento.

“The biggest challenge has been keeping up with protocols and communicating those to families and children as we seek to keep everyone healthy,” Principal Wood says. “These are moving benchmarks from public health and the diocese. Though it has been a challenge, the teachers and students have been so adaptable and willing to do whatever is necessary to keep everyone in school.”

The greatest challenge for Mrs. Rubino during the pandemic was not being able to see her students through to the end of the year. When we returned to school in the fall, Mrs. Rubino found that half of her third-grade students were familiar with the school and half were new. They nearly all had large eyes filled with worry.

“They didn’t know me or what that school year would look like, but we began to inch forward together,” she says. “It became comfortable. It