Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Wayne Lives in the Club

CLIFTON — For Sandra Giordano, failure was not an option.

The longtime educator had already lost her school—she wasn’t about to miss a rare chance to talk to her students about an astronaut.

After learning the depressing news that Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Wayne close foreverGiordano, then the company’s director, came up with a new way to salvage the unique opportunity.

The Catholic school, which served children from preschool through eighth grade, planned to contact a member of the film crew on International Space Station using amateur radio in September. However Diocese of Paterson announced in May that the school would close due to low enrollment and a widening budget deficit.

Giordano, now the principal of St. Catherine of Siena School in Cedar Grove, reorganized the amateur radio club at her former school and, with the help of several departing teachers, created a new club called Heart of ARC.

This group, still in need of a physical location for radio broadcast, collaborated with Clifton Arts Center and Sculpture Park for this to happen.

“I’m one of those people who doesn’t take no for an answer,” Giordano said.

Non-profit organization that will promote the radio broadcast, Ham radio on the International Space Stationor ARISS, was initially reluctant to allow the project to move forward with Heart of ARC since the group is not actually an official organization.

And there was something more.

Each 10-minute radio broadcast costs about $30,000. This entire bill is borne by ARISS, which relies heavily on donations from NASA and other space agencies around the world.

“We want to make sure that the people we give this gift to are doing it for the right reasons,” said Tanya Anderson, ARISS-USA Director of Education. “We want to make the biggest impact on students that we can.”

The ARISS organization is divided into five regions, corresponding to the five space agencies present on the space station: Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States.

According to the ARISS website, amateur radio has been used by American astronauts for 40 years.

The Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, or SAREX, was the predecessor to ARISS. Beginning in November 1983, students were able to interact with astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, which circled the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour.

Heart of ARC, led by Giordano, rewrote the long proposal required for ARISS to consider providing radio communications to the space station. It was approved and the group now plans to engage with the astronaut at the Clifton Arts Center in February.

“Everything happens for a reason”

An art gallery might seem like an unlikely place for such a science project, but director Roxanne Cammilleri said it was as good a place as any.

The “common denominator” between art and space exploration is discovery, Cammilleri said.

The studio, which is preparing to celebrate its 25th anniversary in January, is housed in a pair of restored barns on the city’s public housing estate. They were built many decades ago as a quarantine station for foreign animals, including exotic birds, musk oxen and racehorses.

In July, the art gallery hosted a space-themed Heart of ARC workshop.

Giordano and Donna Roberto, a former Wayne School teacher, taught students about the phases of the moon. Participants used Oreo cookies to illustrate eight different stages by scraping or eating the cream from the cookie halves.

Giordano and Roberto will soon be holding a workshop on hydroponic gardening.

Damaris Herrera is another former Wayne School teacher involved in Heart of ARC. Independence has given the group the freedom to expand, she said, noting there are “a lot of restrictions” under diocesan control.

“I’m a woman of faith, and everything happens for a reason,” Herrera said. “While we were devastated by the school closing, this could actually be a springboard to something bigger.”

Anderson, ARISS-USA’s director of education, said the nonprofit provides about 80 radio broadcasts a year. Most of them are done with schools.

The connection lasts no more than 10 minutes, Anderson said, because it can only happen while the space station and its seven-person crew are above the host schools—or, in this case, an art gallery.

During this short window, participating students speak with the astronaut in a question-and-answer format. Questions, Anderson said, must be accepted by NASA prior to the event.

Anderson, a former teacher from Lisle, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, did a radio show with her students 10 years ago. “When that astronaut’s voice comes back over the radio,” she said, “and they realize that this person is flying 250 miles above them, that’s very impressive.”

Now Giordano is taking the next generation on a space mission.

Heart of ARC retains the remains of its former school in Wayne and includes students from its new school in Cedar Grove, she said. It also reaches out to the community as a whole, she said, as the art gallery has a wide network of supporters.

“We want to inspire our kids,” Giordano said. “If not to become astronauts, then have goals to become great people with great minds.”

Philip DeVensentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news in your local community, subscribe or activate your digital account today.

E-mail: [email protected]

What do astronauts eat?

That question will be answered at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 6 during a workshop at the Clifton Arts Center and Sculpture Park, 900 Clifton Ave. The class for children ages 7 to 12 will be taught by Heart of ARC.

Participants will create gardens from recyclable bottles and learn how to grow plants without soil. They will also try freeze-dried candy and ice cream. The cost is $25 for city residents and $28 for out-of-towners.

To register, call the art gallery at 973-472-5499.