Life after Mercy: How students are moving on after school’s closing

Fiona Merrill
Grade: Senior
School: Southold High School

About an hour of convincing and a disappointing look from her mother.

That’s what it took for Fiona Merrill of Southold to realize Bishop McGann-Mercy was no more.

“I was in a tutoring session, and I got a text from my friend, and as soon as she texted me that the school was closing, I was like, ‘Oh, very funny prank,’ ” she said. “When my mom picked me up from the tutoring session…I immediately broke down.”

For the rest of the school year, Fiona said, it was all she and her friends could focus on.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said.

For Fiona, Catholic school wasn’t an option, because the distance to Saint John the Baptist, which also operates under the Diocese of Rockville Centre, was simply too far, she said.

“I came to terms quickly that the most realistic thing for me would be to go to Southold,” she said.

Although she’s always lived in Southold, Fiona said that when she started at Southold High School, she felt like a newbie.

“My first month, a lot of my teachers were like, ‘Where did you move from? What was your last school?’ ” she said. “And I’d have to be like, ‘Oh, my school shut down.’ ”

Fiona said few people knew how much she struggled to transition from Mercy to Southold. She tried to get through it with a smile, but that didn’t help, she said.

“I kind of tried to put a funny twist on it when I explained [the transition] to people,” she said. “I made people think I was handling it well. Which ties into my transition being so hard. Not even my friends realized how hard of a transition it was for me because I was brushing it off.”

A big part of Fiona’s school involvement at Mercy, she said, was being junior class president. She was also the chairman of Mercy on a Mission, a club which raises money for charity. But Southold students picked their class president prior to Fiona’s entry, and a similar charity club doesn’t exist at the high school.

“For student government and Mercy on a Mission, I was so close to my advisers. I think that’s what I miss the most,” she said. “I’m trying to get involved in little ways at Southold.”

Although she misses her Mercy teachers, she said support from Southold teachers Jessica Ellwood — virtual enterprise — and Jason Wesnofske — video production — helped her adjust.

“From the beginning of the year, they were making sure I was OK, trying to make it the easiest transition possible,” she said. “They’ve been amazing.”

The best thing she can do from here, she said, is recognize that other students are struggling too.

“I know it’s been hard for a lot of people, not just me,” she said.