BOSTON (WHDH) - Thousands of students, teachers, and staff will be back in class Thursday for the first day of classes at Boston Public Schools, with lots of moving pieces involved in the state’s largest district.
More than 48,000 students and nearly 12,000 employees will return to Boston’s 119 elementary, middle, and high schools.
Officials for BPS have already been hard at work looking to address chronic absenteeism; members of BPS joined more than 70 volunteers from the BPS Engagement Center to go door-to-door, looking to get students ready to go back to school.
Included in that task force: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper, who went to the homes of students marked with “chronic absenteeism” last year, hoping to help those students with whatever caused those absences.
Wu and Skipper said the program is about more than just telling kids to stay in school, it is about outreach and support – as well as listening to students.
“There’s so many reasons why our students struggle to go to school,” Skipper said. “Mental health, sometimes they’re working, sometimes they have to bring an income in or they have to take care of other siblings. So there’s lots of reasons that prevent them from being able to go that’s not as simple as ‘they don’t want to'”
“I know our distrcit continues to stand strong,” Wu said. “Whatever wer can do to protect our community memebrs, wheatever we can do to empower our students and their familes. This city is not gonna back down and we’re gonna keep moving forward.”
Skipper said that BPS have seen a 10 percent drop in absenteeism over the last four years and they’re hoping to improve those numbers this school year.
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