Worcester Business Journal

10 Worcester Business Journal | May 24, 2021 | wbjournal.com We're not about to let an extra billion change the way we do business. Thanks billion. another Member FDIC/Member DIF Equal Housing Lender. NMLS # 583135 EQUAL HOUSING LENDER 100% local and now $2 billion in assets. We are pleased to announce that UniBank has achieved $2 billion in assets. While this newest milestone is impressive, we remain firmly committed to doing business as we always have: by providing sound financial solutions and support to our local community. UniBank • 49 Church Street • Whitinsville, MA 01588 www.unibank.com • 800.578.4270 very hard time catching the windfalls of their house appreciation," he said. "ey don't see any of that." As landlords, especially those around Polar Park, wait to see what kind New mortgages in Worcester, by race Percent of originated mortgages going to white homeowners in 2019 Source: Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of financial benefits they might receive from the area undergoing development – and gentrification – current residents are le to find new places to go. Where they end up as they are priced out of their homes remains to be seen. "Either you'll get further concentration into key areas, in terms of public housing, or segregated areas, but it's very unlikely that at the current prices, you'll be able to achieve some degree of housing integration," he said. "It just doesn't happen." at only serves to compound the challenges already in place around saving money for a down payment for eventual homeownership. Student impact Concentrating wealth and homeownership along racial and neighborhood lines has a trickle-down effect across the city, particularly for Worcester's public school children. While curricula and standardized testing may be uniform across a school district, racial and wealth segregation can and does produce wildly different school environments from neighborhood to neighborhood, said Katheryn McNicholas, an education consultant who studied at Clark, worked within Worcester Public Schools and helped compile a new report from Policy for Progress and EdBuild, a Massachusetts- based ideas and actions lab and now- shuttered nonprofit think tank. "What you then come across, though, is you have students in your classroom who maybe are English language learners, so they need more time on assignments, or they need separate instructions, and we don't have the resources to offer them translators or teacher aids," McNicholas said. "Whereas the other schools, they're moving right along because everyone speaks the same language or they have the resources to hire teachers who can translate." e 2020 report, Commonwealth Fault Lines, examined instances of segregation in schools around the state, including Worcester. e report found segregation in the state's public schools has increased in recent decades, despite public perception it has decreased. In Worcester, what ends up happening, McNicholas said, is public schools in the city's lower-income areas, which disproportionately house its residents of color, end up disproportionately responsible for students with greater needs, whether because they are English Language Learners, have disabilities, or experience the myriad of challenges low- income students oen have. For reference, 2018 graduation data from the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education shows the four-year dropout rate in Worcester schools among English learner students was 10.2% and 6.3% for those considered high needs. For low-income students the dropout rate was 5.9%, and for Hispanic/Latino students, the largest nonwhite population group in Worcester schools, that rate was 7.9%. For white students, the dropout rate was 3.4%. Put another way, a 2012 report from the Brookings Institution found, for students attending Worcester's average top quintile school, 87% lived in owner-occupied housing. In the average bottom quintile school in Worcester, that number was 40%. Some schools, McNicholas said, don't have a higher proportion of students who need greater assistance, allowing those schools to become high achieving easier. "And then," she said, "We have plenty of teachers who are really struggling to get through a lesson because they have to adapt to so many different levels of need within one classroom." And those challenges, McNicholas said, are absolutely more prevalent in Worcester's lower-income – and more diverse – communities. Continued from Page 9 W

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