- Good morning, Gabe.

It's really good to hear from you today.

How are you?

- [Michelle] Tonight, the attendance crisis in Rhode Island schools.

- The most difficult one to say out loud is that we've sort of gotten used to not coming in every day.

So I think the habit has been broken, and we have to repair that.

- [Pamela] Then, exploring grief with "New York Times" bestselling author, Ann Hood.

- And I know there are times you feel like nothing will help you, and in those times, it is okay to give in to crying or avoiding people or whatever you have to do.

- And Rhode Island officials face ethics penalties for that notorious business trip to Philadelphia.

We unpack it all with Ted Nesi on this episode of "Weekly Insight".

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues) Good evening, and welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We begin with a crisis in Rhode Island schools.

- Education is known as the great equalizer, but only if students show up.

Nearly 39,000 Rhode Island public school students in grades K through 12 were chronically absent during the last school year.

Research shows students who regularly miss class are falling behind their peers.

Tonight, we explore why many of the state's classrooms are filled with empty seats.

Bella Vasquez is not the conventional student.

She's on track to graduate high school next year when she's 21.

- Sometimes it can feel a little discouraging, saying, you know, I'm getting my diploma at 21, but then I realize not everybody goes through the same things in life.

- [Michelle] She attends Nowell Academy in downtown Providence.

She enrolled here after being out of school for more than three years.

She says an unstable living situation in middle school set her on a path of being chronically absent.

In Rhode Island, that means missing 10% or more of the school year.

- I was living, like, between a hotel and my grandmothers, and it was just very overwhelming to think about school while also thinking about, like, where I was gonna end up.

- [Michelle] When she was in 10th grade, she dropped out of Woonsocket High School.

Her mental health, she says, had reached a breaking point.

Over time, Vasquez says she began taking night classes while she worked, but was forced to make a choice.

- My boss came to me and was like, "You know, unfortunately, like, if you wanna keep the job, we do have to change your schedule."

So I made the unfortunate choice to go with work.

- Why did you make the decision to work?

- Because I have always seen what it's been like to have, like, a rocky living situation, being evicted or, like, bouncing back and forth between places, or just the inconsistency of life.

- [Michelle] Vasquez's story isn't all that uncommon at Nowell Academy.

The charter school works with underserved youth between 15 and 22 years old.

Michael Templeton is the school's principal.

- Our students struggle with everything from housing to food insecurity, to transportation, to daycare.

With all of those factors at play, as you can imagine, our work is cut out for us.

- [Michelle] The school has one of the highest rates of chronic absenteeism in Rhode Island.

As of late March, about 85% of students are on track to be chronically absent this school year.

- The data is staggering, right?

And it's not something we are particularly proud of.

At the same time, we recognize that the students that we serve have had historical issues with chronic absenteeism, as far back as kindergarten for many of them.

- [Michelle] Nowell Academy is far from the only school dealing with truancy.

According to a report by the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, the proportion of chronically absent students statewide increased from 19.1% in the year before the pandemic to 28.9% in the most recent full school year.

I asked State Education Commissioner, Angelica Infante-Green, the number one reason keeping students out of school.

- The most difficult one to say out loud is that we've sort of gotten used to not coming in every day.

So I think the habit has been broken, and we have to repair that.

- [Michelle] Another factor contributing, the commissioner says, financial stability.

- If there's a choice between working and going to school, there is no choice, right?

We have taken choice away.

Because if you have to pay rent, it is what it is.

- [Michelle] High rates of absenteeism prompted a statewide campaign called Attendance Matters RI.

An online dashboard shows how many students are on track to be chronically absent across the state.

Infante-Green says it's making a difference.

- It is really about a campaign, having people understand, and even business community, you know, don't give a kid working hours when they're supposed to be in school.

Maybe pay 'em a little more so that hour that they miss can be supplemented.

Like, this has to be an all-state approach.

- [Michelle] Governor Dan McKee stressed the importance of being in school during his state of the state address in January, and commended Vasquez for improving her attendance.

- And this year, she's on track and no longer chronically absent.

Bella, Rhode Island is proud of you.

Please stand up and let us recognize you as well.

(audience applauding and cheering) - Vasquez's Day begins early.

She takes the bus from Woonsocket to Kennedy Plaza in Providence and then walks to school.

But she says even the bus is unreliable.

On this day, the bus she initially planned to take was canceled last minute.

She had to wait almost an hour for the next one.

It's a common occurrence, she says, as the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority continues grappling with a years long driver shortage.

What do you do with students who have the best of intentions but still can't make it to school on time for reasons beyond their control?

- Providence has a standing meeting with RIPTA to try to address some of these issues.

So we're trying to figure out, do we have more runs or do we have earlier runs?

What are the things that we could do?

Can we shift some scheduling?

Can some classes start later?

- [Michelle] At Nowell Academy, educators know there are many obstacles that make it difficult for students to come to class.

- Good morning, Gabe.

It's really good to hear from you today.

How are you?

- [Michelle] That's why students are assigned mentors who check up on them in the morning, sometimes through a phone call, other times a text message, reminding them to be at school.

- Just wanted to say we're excited to see you today, and happy Friday.

- [Michelle] On this Friday in February, about half of the students who go to Nowell were absent, and several who did show up were late.

- Why were you late?

Come step right up.

- If they arrive an hour or more after school starts, they're required to leave their cell phones in the main office for the day.

- It's 9:30, which means we gotta have you sign in, and I need to take your phone.

Do you have an alarm?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Connected to your phone?

We're having conversations with some of the younger students to say, "Have you set your alarm?

What time are you going to sleep at night?"

It's those basic habit kind of things.

- [Michelle] It's a habit also being built at Norwood Elementary School in Warwick, where Principal Sabrina Antonelli prioritizes attendance.

- We do reach out to families directly and send letters home and try to explain to them the importance of attendance.

- The school has seen a big drop in the number of students who miss school excessively, from nearly 40% at this time last year down to about 20% so far this year.

I'm sure a lot of principals are listening to this, wondering, what's the secret sauce?

How have you done this?

- I think there's a lot of things that we do here at Norwood School that make our school a really safe, caring, supportive community environment, where students come and they genuinely want to be here.

- [Michelle] Principal Antonelli says grant money has allowed the school to offer more afterschool programs this school year, which she says is improving attendance.

- So everybody take a nice, deep breath.

- [Michelle] For instance, students interested in acting can work with a member of The Gamm Theatre.

- Now I want you to show me how you would walk around if, oh, you were just so tired.

- [Michelle] Others participate in the Girls on the Run Rhode Island program, designed to blend physical activity with life skill development.

- [Teacher] Who can tell me one thing about the person they're walking with?

- Kids love their programs, and they have to be here to go to their programs.

- [Michelle] Those who aren't here can expect to hear from the school secretary.

- Hi, this is Janice for Jerry.

I'm calling from Norwood.

I know he's been out for a few days, and we just wanted to make sure everything was all right.

- Principal Antonelli says the school also expanded its food pantry to support more families.

Can you explain how the food pantry is helping, if at all, to improve the rates of absenteeism?

- If students' basic needs are met and they feel if they're getting the food they need, they feel nourished, they have clean clothes, they feel more confident, you're more likely to get them here.

- [Michelle] Back in Providence, Vasquez says educators need to recognize being able to attend school is a privilege.

She says many students face more pressing issues.

- A lot of people have stories just like mine, where they have rough living situations, where they're taking care of siblings, or even parents are sick and they have to take care of them.

And I know a lot of kids who had to, like, help support their families.

- What do you make of this notion that for some students, school is a privilege because they need to help support their families?

- We definitely have heard that from a number of kids.

We have to find ways where that isn't the case.

It is a necessity, especially if you've come from a working class family or low income family.

That is your way out.

- Vasquez is dealing with a recent knee injury.

Still, she heads to work at a gas station after school.

She says she has medical bills to pay.

Despite her busy schedule, she says she's the happiest she's ever been.

She has a stable living situation and plans to go to college to study music education.

Do you surprise yourself how far you've come?

- Absolutely.

Sometimes, I really do find myself, like, shedding a tear of happiness, because I never thought I was gonna be here, ever.

And now that I'm beating every single odd that has been put in front of me, it feels amazing.

- And Bella told me that she wanted to share her story because she hopes that other people who are in a similar situation will know it's possible to turn your life around.

- And you never really know what someone else is going through.

Well, up next, when Providence based and "New York Times" bestselling author, Ann Hood, lost her little daughter two decades ago, the overwhelming grief took over her life.

Tonight, we revisit her take on coping with grief, and how people can help someone going through such a devastating loss.

- People do lie about grief.

They tell you time will heal.

They tell you God only gives us what we can handle.

They tell you all those platitudes that really don't apply and that really don't help.

(Ann claps) My name is Ann Hood, and this is my take on coping with grief.

April of 2002 was an incredibly unusually hot month for New England.

And what I didn't know but would later learn is that spike in temperature did something strange to the strep virus, the one that you usually get strep throat from and that kids did get strep throat from.

My son had it, I had it, my daughter Grace had it.

But hers was the virulent kind that they call galloping strep.

And she spiked a fever, so I rushed her to the emergency room, but within hours, I found myself in the ICU with a doctor looking me in the face and saying, "Your daughter's not gonna make it."

She was in the hospital for 36 hours before she died on April 18th.

Part of what writers do is make sense out of chaos, whether we're writing fiction or nonfiction.

But when Grace died, I couldn't make sense of it.

And writing required that, requires it of writers.

So every time someone handed me a notebook or just gave me that advice, "I hope you're writing this down," or, "Please write this down," or, "You'll feel better if you write about it," I could just shake my head, because they didn't understand that I couldn't read a sentence in "People Magazine".

I couldn't pay attention to a movie, I couldn't follow the plot.

My brain was not processing the way it had for my entire life up until that time.

I think people, wonderful people, want to fix everything.

You know when you call a friend, you have a broken heart or you don't know what to do about your job or any kind of thing that happens in your life, you call someone for advice and they wanna help you, they wanna fix it, they wanna come up with a solution to make your life easier and better.

But when you lose someone, and I have to say, losing your five-year-old daughter, maybe in particular, they can't fix it.

No one can fix it.

I always say that six months later, when I learned how to knit, it brought my concentration back, because I'm not very crafty, and I had to think so hard to get, you know, seven stitches done correctly.

But that kind of allowed me to start reading again, because I was, like, training my brain how to think and concentrate again.

And slowly, slowly, I began to write again.

And so I wrote an essay called "Comfort", that became my memoir, "Comfort", about the lies people tell you when you're grieving.

And I wrote it with my responses to them, the things I wished I had the courage or the nerve or the energy to say, but I just couldn't.

So, as a writer, I wrote them down instead.

For me, and I think for many other people, your brain is like an old VCR stuck on replay, where it keeps replaying the hours leading up to what happened.

And for me, those hours began in the emergency room.

And I would start there and I would just replay it, replay it, and of course, the end of that loop is Grace dying.

And as much as people had told me, "Write it down, it might help," it did help to explore grief.

And after I wrote "The Knitting Circle", the novel, I started writing about grief in my fiction, so that I was writing and exploring different aspects of grief with distance, and that distance kind of opened the door.

Now when I think of her, I almost never think of the hospital.

I always think of her as she was.

My advice to someone who's grieving, perhaps just started grieving, is that there's no rule book for this.

There's no roadmap to follow.

You know what you feel and you know what you need.

And don't try to please the people around you by doing what they think you need.

It's really, really important to understand what will help you.

And I know there are times you feel like nothing will help you, and in those times, it is okay to give in to crying or avoiding people or whatever you have to do.

Don't fall into the misleading idea that there's a way out, that everyone has the same way out of this.

My advice to someone who wants to help a friend or a relative who's grieving is kind of twofold.

Do something extraordinary and do something small.

Something extraordinary, I have a friend in New York City who just felt so terrible that she wasn't near me after Grace died, that we had all these miles between us.

And one day, she just drove those three and a half hours and showed up with lunch for me, and it made me feel good for days, that someone did that extraordinary thing.

Another friend stayed away respectfully, didn't call, but she sent me a card every day for 30 days.

So, every day I knew that she was thinking of me.

Show up in whatever way you can, and don't expect anything from the person who's grieving.

Do those things that are comforting.

We all know how it is to be comforted and what we need.

Think of that and do that for them.

My name is Ann Hood, and this has been my take on coping with grief.

- Next, in this week's episode of "Weekly Insight", Michelle and WPRI 12's politics editor, Ted Nesi, talk about why the Chairman of the House's January 6th Committee visited Rhode Island, and why a former state official was ordered to pay a fine.

- Welcome back, Ted.

Let's start with the state's Ethics Commission taking action against two former state employees, who went on what's been described as this notorious business trip to Philadelphia last year.

Let's keep in mind, they were there to visit a facility run by Scout LTD, a company that was looking to redevelop the Cranston Street Armory in Providence.

- Right, and to remind folks of the players in this little drama, state properties director, David Patten, who you'll see here in the video, he's in the blue gray suit leaving the Ethics Commission this week, he was accused of behaving very unprofessionally, and even demanding freebies from vendors at this facility.

Like, famously, vegan cheese was one of them.

While his travel companion, the Director of Administration at the time, Jim Thorsen, was accused of just kind of standing by and letting his behavior play out.

- And this all came to light after Scout executives sent state leaders an email accusing Patten of, quote, "Bizarre, offensive behavior that was blatantly sexist, racist, and unprofessional."

They also said that Patten demanded that a restaurant that was closed open early so he could have a free lunch there?

- Yeah, and that free lunch is what's really gotten Patten and potentially Thorsen in trouble here.

Under the state ethics code, it's very clear, officials can only accept gifts, something from someone doing business with the state, valued at $25 or less.

This lunch was worth a good bit more than that, including the fact that they had opened the restaurant when it was supposed to be closed.

Patten has agreed to pay a $5,000 ethics fine to end his case.

That's actually one of the higher ethics fines we've seen in Rhode Island in recent memory.

But Thorsen, again, the former administration director, who was his companion on the trip, he's still fighting the ethics panel on this, arguing, you know, he reported it to HR, he didn't do anything wrong.

But if you read the investigative report, Michelle, looking at their behavior, the ethics panel seems to zero in on the fact that Thorsen didn't offer to pay Scout back for the free lunch until he learned Scout had sent that whistleblower email, which doesn't seem to have sat well with the Ethics Commission.

- And we should note that neither man works for the McKee Administration anymore.

Switching gears, Ted, Congressman Seth Magaziner recently invited the Chairman of the House January 6th Committee to Rhode Island.

This is Congressman Benny Thompson of Mississippi.

And you had a chance to sit down with them, and you asked them how effective the January 6th Committee was in light of the continued success that we see former President Donald Trump have.

Let's take a listen.

- I think once people get into the weeds of the report, and I encourage people to read it, it's 850 pages, but nonetheless, the facts speak for themselves.

- There are a lot of Republicans who I talk to out there who are conservative, but they are not comfortable with Donald Trump, because they know that when you try to stop a peaceful transfer of power from happening, that is anti-American, and when you try to overturn the will of the voters, that is anti-American.

- And Ted, it's easy to forget that Magaziner is still a freshman representative, only elected in 2022.

Of course, he was overshadowed last year by Gabe Amo's special election.

- Yes, and, you know, it's striking, too, that Magaziner doesn't right now, Michelle, have a Republican opponent for this fall's November election.

I mean, people remember, 2022, that was a national race.

Millions and millions of dollars poured into Rhode Island by both parties.

Republican Allan Fung almost won the seat, only came within a few points of that.

But right now, Magaziner is on a clear path to run potentially even unopposed.

And at least he has no, you know, top tier candidate.

So, I think the Thompson visit is interesting, 'cause I think it's giving us a glimpse into what Congressman Magaziner's priorities are, what he really cares about.

He's been very critical of the Trump and MAGA wing of the Republican Party during his time in office so far.

He, of course, has been critical of the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

But he also went viral for a combative exchange with Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on the floor.

So I think he is really passionate about these topics.

- Do you think the average Rhode Islander shares that passion about not just democracy, but holding people accountable for January 6th?

- It's a good question.

It's one, frankly, political pros have been debating, Michelle.

You know, obviously, well, if you take a poll, most Americans will say yes, they support the peaceful transfer of power.

You know, yeah, are they made impassioned by that?

I think, you know, President Biden's top advisor, Mike Donilon, who's actually a Providence native, he said they think democracy is gonna be a pillar of President Biden's reelection campaign, and these sorts of issues.

But I also think Magaziner just is sincerely passionate about these himself, so I think it might not be only a political calculus, it might also just be what he cares about.

- Thanks so much, Ted, appreciate it.

- Good to be here.

- Finally tonight, we take a sneak peek.

Next week we'll go behind the scenes at Three Wheel Studio in Fox Point, where potter Dwo Wen Chen throws ceramics by hand.

- As a soft top potter, you don't have all the restraints of all the disciplines, of all the rules.

(clay squelches) I really go into the pottery making blindfolded in a way, and therefore I make a lot of mistakes.

I'm even tempted to say I make all the mistakes there is to make in pottery making.

But out of that, I came up with some pretty creative way of having a final piece.

That's what it is.

- It's always amazing to see how they can take a slab of clay and turn it into a work of art, and we'll see more next week.

That's our broadcast this evening.

I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm Michelle San Miguel.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

Until then, please follow us on Facebook and X, and visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly, or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Goodnight.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues)