Published in Worcester Telegram & Gazette from Jan. Worcester County's leader in news and information from Take our Father's Day photo quiz and test your knowledge of celebrity dads and kids.
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Since 2013, when Worcester’s rate dropped to a low of 12.4 percent, the percentage of chronically absent students had inched up to 14.8 as of last year, according to state records.Get in touch with us about stories happening in your community, questions or concerns, and how to purchase our content for personal or professional use. School officials’ hope is to reverse an upward chronic absenteeism trend in the district over the past few years. The district also recently began sending attendance reports home with students that provide several charts intended to help families see how their child’s specific attendance history compares to school and system averages. The appliances would not just be helpful for washing the clothes of kids whose families can’t afford their own laundering, she added several principals have also said they would like the ability to clean and dry students’ outer garments that get wet or messy during the school day.Ĭlothes washing is just one of several new approaches to lowering the district’s chronic absenteeism rate the school department is trying out this year, Ms. Binienda said she’d like to purchase two washers and dryers apiece for four schools in the city’s north quadrant. Kola Akindele, senior director of the medical school’s Office of Community and Government Relations, said Worcester school officials have preliminarily identified around 14 or 15 schools across the district that, like Sullivan, have a high number of economically disadvantaged children and thus are likely candidates for washers and dryers.įor the start of next school year, at least, Ms. This week, representatives from the university confirmed UMass is on board to pay for the appliances, although they had not yet worked out the details, including the funding mechanism it will use.
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Binienda mentioned at a recent meeting with potential public school benefactors her wish to install washers and dryers at other schools, UMass Medical School Chancellor Michael Collins volunteered his institution to help finance the initiative. Binienda spearheaded a number of programs, including a food pantry and health center, intended to provide necessities many of the school’s students weren’t getting at home. “Our plan is really to make kids feel like school is home,” said Worcester Superintendent Maureen Binienda, “so they can just focus on learning.”Īs the former principal of South High, for instance, Ms. And one cannot be more important than the other.” “We talk about school as having two prongs – there’s the academic side, and the social side. “It’s a practical solution to a practical problem,” she said, adding so far the new service seems to be keeping at-risk students from missing too many school days. Robertson said she bought a new washer and dryer before the start of the school year, and tasked the school’s wrap-around coordinator with assisting children who wanted to use them during the school day. Using some of the school’s fundraising money, Ms. Last school year, slightly more than 16 percent of Sullivan’s student population was chronically absent, nearly two percentage points higher than the district average and four points higher than the state average. One of those issues is chronic absenteeism, which the state defines as missing 18 days or more during a single school year. “That makes them feel isolated in the classroom, which then leads to other issues.” “Sometimes kids come into school wearing clothes that are not very fresh,” she said, explaining Sullivan has a high concentration of students from low-income families – specifically, 57 percent of the school’s population qualifies as “economically disadvantaged,” according to the state’s records. The effort is buoyed in part by Sullivan Middle School’s experiment with a washer and dryer this year, which principal Josephine Robertson credits with helping students become more comfortable going to school. The Worcester school administration is betting it can, with plans underway to begin installing washers and dryers at four schools next school year and possibly more after that. But can it stop a student from missing school? WORCESTER – A clean change of clothes may be refreshing.
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