nothin Uh Oh. Ms. Sepulveda Was At The Door | New Haven Independent

Uh Oh. Ms. Sepulveda Was At The Door

Paul Bass Photo

Vinshon: Loved mom. School, not so much.

Vinshon Cranshaw sang about how much he loves his mom — when his mom would have preferred he were in school.

It was a school day. Vinshon was hanging out at home instead of heading for class at Hillhouse High School. He’d been doing that a lot lately, maybe two days a week.

Mom didn’t know. She was at work.

Vinshon preferred writing music to attending school. He said he was working on recording a song. His song subjects included what a great mom he has.

A knock at the door interrupted him.

He wondered who it could be. He opened to the door to find Michelle Sepulveda.

Uh oh. He knew Ms. Sepulveda from school. Her job is to track down truants and set them straight.

Oh, hi,” Vinshon said.

Is your mom home?” Sepulveda asked.

No.”

We need to talk.”

Vinshon told the story during an appearance on WNHH radio’s Dateline New Haven” program. The topic: New Haven’s alarming rate of chronic school absenteeism. And promising efforts the school system has launched to combat it.

A state report card issued in March found that New Haven schools had Connecticut’s rock-bottom chronic absenteeism rates: 30 percent among high-needs” students (who miss 10 or more days a year) in 2014 – 5.

Vinshon was one of those statistics in his sophomore year. He didn’t like getting up for school.

You need to go to school, he remembered Sepulveda telling him: If you don’t show up, you won’t have a future.”

He did show up more. And his football coach sealed the deal. Vinshon has played organized football for years. He loves it. The coach said he’d be cut from the team unless he started showing up to school and improving his grades.

That was last year. Vinshon just finished junior year, with better grades. He’s no longer one of the statistics.

Twyla.

Nor is Twyla Green. She had a different reason for being a statistic last year. She was active in a dance program. She takes AP classes. She often doesn’t have time to start studying until 10 p.m. She failed to get up early enough for school. Often late, she was marked as absent, again and again.

Sepulveda came to see her too. She helped Twyla figure out how to get herself out of bed on time. Twyla’s still tired this year, but she’s making school on time. And she’s preparing for her senior year with the clear goal of joining her three older siblings in attending college.

New Haven has had full-time workers like Sepulveda and Renard Sutton, a Newhallville native who left a manufacturing job to join the team, for years. This past year the team has upped its game by working with other school system adults on a joint citywide Attendance Matters” campaign. They’re meeting with social workers, administrators and teachers at each school to identify truant students and plan together for how to help them straighten out. They’ve done door-to-door community canvasses. The district has enlisted the health department to have pediatricians and clinics help families address asthma or other health problems keeping their kids home. Parents are getting calls after students have four or more absences.

Sutton

The effort has produced some results in the academic year now ending. A joint pilot absenteeism program conducted with the probate court helped drive absenteeism rates down 15 percent at Quinnipiac Real World Math STEM School, as detailed in this article. Extra money pumped into staff to address absenteeism at lower-performing Alliance” schools cut third-quarter chronic absenteeism from 30.8 in 2015 to 16.2 percent in 2016 at Lincoln-Bassett, 24.2 percent to 18.2 percent at Robert Clemente, and 24.4 percent to 10.6 percent at Bishop Woods. Of 22 targeted schools, 20 saw decreases in chronic absenteeism, according to schools spokeswoman Mercy Quaye. One school had no change; at Barnard, rates increased.

Tuesday night a citywide celebration is planned to mark the progress in cutting absenteeism. It begins at the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School at 150 Kimberly Ave. at 5 p.m.

Which means there’s still a lot of work to do. Twyla, Vinshon, outreach worker Sutton, and the school system’s chief of youth, family and engagement, Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, discussed the challenges and successes on the episode of WNHH’s Dateline New Haven.” Click on the above sound file to hear the full episode.

And click above to listen to a track VInshon worked on at home. While he has gotten with the program about attending class, he still found time to post a sweet song for mom.

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

There were no comments