Lack of school readiness is detrimental to academic achievement. Research shows that brain development during a child’s first few years of life lays the foundation for later growth and learning capacity. Therefore, early experiences are crucial to academic progress; yet our students often arrive at school with little exposure to vocabulary, literacy, and numeracy. More and more our school families are experiencing significant trauma. The struggle to find adequate housing leads to small row houses being filled beyond capacity. Often, many of these rowhomes provide shelter for more than one family at a time. Due to the limited space and the number of people living in these homes, there is often noise from conversation or the television, which may lead to sleep deprivation for our students. It is not uncommon to see students fall asleep in an active classroom due to exhaustion. [Indicators 1, 5, 6, 10]

Due to the stress caused by these situations, it is not uncommon for parents to turn to drugs and alcohol, which in turn can lead to addiction problems. The lack of both physical and mental healthcare locally is another factor complicating the well-being of our families. The health room in our school becomes their health clinic. We are fortunate enough to have a social worker assigned to our building a few days a week to help families in need. In addition, we have a Villa Maria therapist who works directly with many of our families who need support. [Indicators 1, 5, 6, 10]

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