The school was effectively saying:
If access to clean clothes is preventing you from attending class comfortably, we can help remove that obstacle.
The project also created an unexpected learning opportunity.
Some students needed guidance in learning how to use the machines and wash their own clothing.
A facility created to fight absenteeism and bullying could therefore also teach a basic life skill.
Why Clean Clothes Could Affect Confidence
To an adult with reliable access to a washer and dryer, clean clothes may seem like a relatively small issue.
For a teenager, they can be deeply connected with social confidence.
High school is an environment in which students are often intensely conscious of how they are perceived.
Clothing, appearance, smell and hygiene can become sources of anxiety.
Cook saw the effect directly.
He told CBS New York that confidence mattered. Being able to feel clean and presentable could make it easier for a student to walk to the front of a classroom without worrying that classmates were staring at stains on their pants or making comments about them.
The laundry room could not eliminate every form of bullying.
But it could remove one obvious target.
And for students whose lack of clean clothes was connected to financial hardship, the school could provide assistance without blaming them for circumstances largely beyond their control.
Source: CBS New York interviewed Cook and students about the relationship between clean clothes, bullying and confidence when the program launched in 2018.
A Different Approach to Attendance
This was what made Cook's response unusual.
He could have looked at attendance statistics and focused entirely on punishment.
He could have told students that they needed to be more responsible.
Instead, the school investigated why they were missing class.
That investigation revealed a problem no attendance policy could solve by itself.
A student who stayed home because he feared being photographed and mocked for dirty clothes was unlikely to be persuaded simply by another lecture about the importance of attendance.
Remove the reason for the embarrassment, however, and returning to school became easier.
Cook had effectively changed the question.
Instead of asking only:
"Why aren't these students coming to school?"
He also asked:
"What is preventing them from feeling able to come?"
That difference shaped the solution.
National Attention
News of the project spread quickly.
Major news organizations reported on West Side High School's laundry room, and people around the country began donating supplies.
The story resonated because the solution was so ordinary.
Cook had not created an expensive new educational technology.
He had not developed a complicated academic intervention.
He had installed washing machines and dryers.
Yet those machines addressed something that traditional school interventions could easily overlook.
CBS News returned to West Side High School in March 2019 to see how the program was working.