Salem News: Salem Schools to Partner with AmeriCorps

SALEM — School leaders have new allies in the fight to improve the district and pull it out of its state-assigned Level 4 status.

Officials from Salem Public Schools, along with Congressman Seth Moulton, came together with the Massachusetts Service Alliance, United Way and AmeriCorps Monday morning to launch a partnership that will bring service volunteers to help the city's English language learning (ELL) school population.

Through an expansion of an existing program in Lynn, Bowditch Elementary and Salem High stand to see added support for their ELL students going forward, according to Salem Superintendent Margarita Ruiz.

In Lynn, 15 AmeriCorps members have been working for a few years now to bring that district to higher performance levels, according to Emily Haber, CEO of the Massachusetts Service Alliance.

"United Way, four years ago, saw a need in Lynn — and they came to us and talked about it and was able to put together a program," Haber said.

In that time, English language learners saw a boost in academic performance — 75 percent of them have demonstrated improved academic engagement, and more than 60 percent have increased performance in core academic classes.

Now, the program is expanding to 25 AmeriCorps members, who will work in Salem, in addition to Lynn.

Haber said the alliance, which administers the AmeriCorps program in Massachusetts, is "really excited about this expansion."\

"That's just such a testament to the power of the program they were running for three years," Haber said.

Bowditch Elementary and Salem High have "the largest number, largest concentration of English language learners," Ruiz explained.

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That isn't to say the schools are in crisis, however, according to officials.

Bowditch does sit at the bottom of the city's schools when ranked by overall performance — and the latest rankings from the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education puts it at the 8th percentile statewide — but the school has also seen an ongoing, concentrated effort to drive performance to higher levels.

Salem High School, while sitting at the 24th percentile statewide, did, however, see an upgrade last year to Level 1 under state guidelines, which was due to the degree of students' improvement over the prior year.

Helping the students learn English "is great," Ruiz said, but there is also a mentoring aspect to AmeriCorps' involvement in the city.

The added resource will help students "navigate through school, navigate through college, and (we're) really hoping that the mentors of AmeriCorps will help be another avenue that will support our students in that path to excellence, college and career success," she said.

The partnership's kickoff came with the support of Moulton, who went into detail on the greater effects service can have on a community.

The congressman offered brief comments on the current racial divide in America, reinvigorated, in part, by the tenor of the ongoing presidential campaign.

"Unfortunately, we live now in an America that is increasingly divided — increasingly divided on class. Our communities are becoming more segregated by income," Moulton said. "Poor people don't live next to rich people. The rich people in our communities make hundreds of times more than the poor, which wasn't the case throughout our history."\

But in the midst of "that incredibly divided environment, in the midst of a country that has always thrived by doing things together and yet is finding it more difficult to come together today, we have the counterpoint to that — our service organizations," Moulton continued.

His view of the partnership was of a bigger picture, looking at it as a way to "integrate people into our community, integrate refugees and immigrants, teach them English."\

Article here.