By then, students were actively using the laundry facilities, and the school had accumulated hundreds of donated bottles of detergent, fabric softener and dryer sheets.
Students interviewed by CBS described using the machines themselves.
One acknowledged initially feeling nervous about bringing clothes to the school's laundromat before eventually asking Cook if it was okay to use it.
That hesitation demonstrated precisely why the way the program was presented mattered.
Students needed not only access to the machines but also reassurance that there was nothing shameful about needing them.
Source: CBS News' March 2019 follow-up documented students using the laundry room and the large volume of cleaning products donated to West Side High School.
What the Original Reporting Does — and Doesn't — Establish
As Cook's story has circulated on social media over the years, some versions have added a particularly attractive statistic:
Attendance supposedly increased by about 10 percent after the laundromat opened.
That figure is now frequently repeated in viral posts.
However, the major contemporary reports reviewed for this article — including coverage from The Washington Post, ABC News and CBS News in 2018 and CBS's 2019 follow-up — clearly document the absenteeism problem, bullying, $20,000 grant, laundry facility and student use of the program, but do not provide a verified school-data analysis establishing a 10 percent attendance increase caused by the laundry room.
That does not mean the number is necessarily false.
It means it should not be presented as a firmly established outcome without stronger primary documentation.
The well-supported story is already significant without it.
Students were missing school.
Cook and his colleagues discovered that lack of clean clothing and resulting bullying were among the reasons some stayed home.
The school obtained funding.
It installed five washers and five dryers.
Students were given free access to laundry facilities.
And students were documented using them.
Five Washers, Five Dryers — and a Larger Idea
The lasting lesson from West Side High School is not really about washing machines.
It is about identifying barriers.
Schools often encounter the visible consequences of problems whose causes exist somewhere else.
Poor attendance is visible.
A student's embarrassment about dirty clothes may not be.
Falling grades are visible.
Housing instability may not be.
A teenager sleeping through class is visible.
What happened the night before may not be.
Cook's approach demonstrated what can happen when an educator looks beyond the visible symptom.
He could not solve every financial difficulty faced by students at West Side.
He could not guarantee that no student would ever bully another.
He could not eliminate poverty.
But there was one specific barrier he could address.
If a student did not have clean clothes, the school could provide a washing machine.
If the student did not have money for detergent, the school could provide detergent.
If the student did not know how to do laundry, an adult could show them.