About 200 children in the city are awaiting placement by the state, and 31 of them have been waiting more than four years.
All the children are eagerly awaiting the start of summer vacation.
In Massachusetts, some 4,400 names appear on the state's list of children awaiting adoption.
Much of this time could be wasted while children awaited the teacher's attention or were simply distracted.
For children awaiting adoption, the abuse rate is more than 12 times that threshold.
In half of them, he raised money for children awaiting organ transplants.
It is an alternative to residential care for children awaiting adoption or the resolution of problems in their natural families.
An innocent child awaited his return, a child that needed him.
One winter morning, though, its neighbors woke up to find that it was about to become a detention home for children awaiting trial.
In the last four years, the number of special-needs children awaiting adoption has jumped more than 30 percent, from 750 to 1,000.