Update on Gloucester Classroom Closures

On October 27, Pathways for Children’s Gloucester Center experienced significant flooding brought on by a strong storm and the subsequent power failure.  

Our Head Start classroom wing, serving children ages 2.9 - 5, was the most heavily damaged. Due to the damages, we were forced to close five classrooms. 

This closure directly impacted 56 families with children in our program.  

We immediately began the intense work of remediating the situation– bringing in professional cleaning crews, environmental testing agencies, insurance companies, and construction crews for round-the-clock operations.  

Since then, we have been able to bring back two full classrooms and offer emergency drop-in care, providing services to more than half of our families.  

As of today, we have 23 families who are without on-site childcare. For those families, we are offering virtual programming via Zoom until we have all classrooms open. 

We understand how hard this closure has been for our families – and how critical the child care we provide is to their situations and success. Our social work team is maintaining close connections with our families throughout these difficult weeks. We are working to provide aid to help defray the financial hardships families have incurred during the classroom closure and are supplying additional resources as needed. 

We anticipate fully re-opening classrooms in Gloucester on November 29. We are grateful to our families and our community for the support they have shown. Please know we are doing everything in our power to reopen safely and quickly. In the meantime, we are here to help in any way that we can – please don’t hesitate to reach out to Theresa Folse, Admissions Manager, at tfolse@pw4c.org.