Helping Kids Starts with Listening

A Burrell High School student was missing day after day of school. Her grades were falling. Her self-esteem was plummeting.

An attendance specialist from the nonprofit group Communities in Schools Pittsburgh-Allegheny County met with her and set up a daily check-in system to help keep her on track.

The next time she didn’t come to school, the specialist went to her house to find out what was wrong. What she discovered was revelatory. The girl’s older brother had died, and the family was paralyzed with grief. The specialist helped connect the student to social services to help her process the grief. And her attendance and grades improved dramatically.

Bridget Clement, Executive Director of Communities in Schools of Pittsburgh-Allegheny County, combats chronic school absenteeism with a case-worker approach. She said the girl was grateful that the worker cared enough to come to her house. “Some people might think that is pushy,” Clement said. But the student was grateful that someone cared enough to find out why she wasn’t coming to school, and to connect her with real support.

The Richard King Mellon Foundation awarded Communities in Schools Pittsburgh-Allegheny County $775,000 in 2022 to help reduce chronic absenteeism in three school districts in Westmoreland County — Burrell, Greensburg Salem, and New Kensington-Arnold — and also Northern Westmoreland Career and Technology Center. Like so many other local districts, these schools have a significant need for the services Communities in Schools can provide. In New Kensington-Arnold, for example, 70 percent of the students are economically disadvantaged and 32 percent are chronically absent, Clement said.

Clement said this is the first time the nonprofit has worked in rural sections of Westmoreland County. She said the work in rural areas can be more challenging than in urban areas because rural communities often have less access to social services.

Each participating district has a Communities in Schools attendance specialist who identifies students at risk of chronic absence and works with administrators, teachers and guidance counselors, as well as students and their families. They also connect families to social services such as United Way or Catholic Charities.

Clement said her staff talks to students and really listens to what is going on in their lives. “Attendance, behavior and poor grades are symptoms, they're not the problem. You have to take time to talk to the student and family and listen to what it is they need.”

She said that students who grow up in low-income households often face chronic stress and trauma in their everyday lives. “When you are living in poverty, you don’t have your basic needs secured. It impacts how the brain develops and how they approach challenging situations.”

If left to figure it out on their own, students who face these challenges often learn negative coping mechanisms to get by. But they also build resilience, and, with guidance, Clement says, this resilience can be an asset. “What we have to do is figure out how to take that resiliency?and turn it on its head a little bit. You do that by giving them a different experience.”

Clement wants to combat absenteeism in rural areas of Westmoreland County in part because it reminds her of her hometown of St. Clairsville, Ohio.

“The reason I worked in child welfare is that my parents were foster parents when I was 10. They adopted two kids from the child welfare system. My mother became an adolescent counselor.”

She has seen firsthand the issues children face when they’ve had an unfair start. Now she wants to help students in rural communities in Westmoreland County receive the support they need to help get them back on track.