Malden High School is not just a school for 1,800 plus high school students, a section of the school is also a daycare; the children that attend are mostly young children of teachers, teen moms and dads, and parents outside of the high school.
The daycare is located in Malden High, but isn’t affiliated with Malden Public Schools, but instead is run by Catholic Charities, a nonprofit organization. Catholic Charities does a lot of things, they do daycares, early learning centers, and a lot of work in urban settings. They also do a lot around early childhood education, food pantries, shelters, immigration, and legal services, The daycare is an early education and learning program.
The daycare at MHS is a place where parents can drop off their children from ages 6 weeks to 7 years old, the hours are from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, but the infant toddler program ends at 4:30 pm.
With a total of 47 children, Catholic Charities does its part with only 13 staff, they make sure each kid is well taken care of, gets an education, and is fed. To make sure the kids are safe “We have to do a C.O.R.I background check, then we need to do fingerprints to make sure that nobody working with the kids has a criminal past, then we can start the hiring process” " stated Sulochana Rana, the director of the daycare.
“We opened in 1997 at the Lincoln School which was located on Lincoln Commons over by the intersection of Cross Street, and in 1999 we moved to Malden High School. We moved here in 1999 because the Ferryway School opened. When Ferryway opened, they tore down the Lincoln school and we were upstairs on the second floor with pace programs but we moved down to the first floor Jenkins after the high school did renovations 15 years ago” " stated Michelle Cunningham adding “I like the consider myself the ghost of the daycare I go everywhere”.
Throughout the day, students of MHS may see the children going on walks on Holland's first floor, “I don't know much about the daycare and the way they do things but one thing I do know is that it puts a smile on my face every time I see the little kids walking together”, Stated Christopher Mastralengelo.
The childcare Catholic Charities offers has many different children of many different backgrounds. The daycare has “many children with different cultural backgrounds and we wish for them to learn how to speak English and work on their social skills, to play, and to engage among each other” " stated Rana, “I have the privilege of not only being a grownup through this program but also being a mom through this program, my daughter came here so I know as a teacher and as a mom how special it is to be at the center”, concluded Cunningham.
