Education for Homeless Children

“A homeless count last week in Los Angeles likely missed many children under five who are often hidden from view and yet are among the most impacted by their homelessness.” -KPCC

One night while online, I read this intro to an article on the KPCC website. My entire world immediately stopped. 

When we think of a homeless person, we often think of a middle-aged or old man, unshowered, often with a mental illness such as schizophrenia and a drug addition. We don’t think about a 4-year-old child or even a high school student applying to college.

That’s why I chose to delve into this issue and do my own reporting on it.

I met a girl at UCLA named Angela who was once homeless. Her mother struggled with mental illness. Her father had to take time off work to take care of her mother and her as a child. When he went back to work, the his particular job of designing with a pencil, the field had moved to a computer and unfortunately he didn’t know how to learn that skill. Her parents divorced when she was 11 and when the recession hit in 2007, they lost their home. They motel hopped until her dad’s credit ran out. By her 17^th birthday, in her junior year of high school, they were moving from shelter to shelter.

As previously mentioned, children are often overlooked when it comes to the topic of homelessness, but they are among the most impacted. They are in the most critical time for building the most important foundation of success for the rest of their lives: education. 

The Homeless Education Consultant from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, Melissa Schoonmaker, says that there are 67,000 children in Los Angeles County in the same situation that Angela was, homeless. That’s 22% of the entire population of homeless children in the US. Out of 50 states, that's an extremely high percentage for just one city.

LA County is comprised of 80 school districts, each one with a certain number of homeless children and each one trying to help that child stay in school and get a quality education.

The initial biggest issue for school districts is identifying which children are homeless. The state definition is broad. Under the McKinney-VentoAct, a child is homeless if they are sleeping in a place that is not meant to be slept in, such as an office or garage, and if they are living doubled or tripled up with relatives or other family members. However, under the Urban Housing and Development laws, a child is homeless if they are on the streets or in a shelter. Therefore, it is difficult to help families and children with federal assistance. 

The next biggest issue is reaching the children and their families. In Angela’s case, she didn’t tell any of her faculty or teachers. She didn’t want anyone to know because she says school was her escape. School was where she got to be the smart one and looked up to. Pride and social stigmas play a large role in hindering families from accepting help. Angela didn't have wifi or even a printer at the shelters, but she never wanted special treatment from her teachers. She would try to get all of her homework done whenever she had internet access and she would get to school early to print. When it came to applying for college and scholarships, she would call her friends and dictate her essays to them over the phone.

The biggest and most prominent issue for school districts is funding. As I mentioned, LA County holds 22% of the homeless children population, but it is very far from 22% of the nation's funding. School districts are funded by the government. The state of California gets very little money from the US government and that money is then distributed amongst school districts in various counties. The question is, how do they choose which districts get money? It’s not based on the number of homeless they have in their schools or the average income of the residents—it’s based off of who writes the best applications for grants. Schoonmaker says it depends on what they say they will use the money for, how they’ve used money before and how past use of funds has worked for them/improved the education of homeless children.

The bottom line here: Out of 80 school districts in Los Angeles County, the state of California only gave out grants to SIX SCHOOLS— and that’s 6 schools not districts.

Schools districts rely on any help they can get to keep homeless children in school and give them a fair chance at a good education and really, just making it to high school graduation. Schoonmaker says that statistics show a homeless student may start high school, but the numbers drop as they get into 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade. She says when school is too hard for a child and education is their last priority-- compared to priorities like worrying about their next meal and where they’re going to sleep that night, they end up dropping out of school.

Lisa Nunes, a middle school principal in Torrance, says that kids who don’t have a permanent home and have been moved around either in foster care or shelters, often have major gaps in their education. When kids show up at a certain school, the school places them in a grade level based on their age—not where they stand academically. This has a significant affect on their entire education. Nunes says many times it's difficult to figure out what the child learned at previous schools and has to place them in classes, hoping that teachers will work together to help that child. This reminds me of the movie The Blind Side, where Michael Oher was placed in high school, but was functioning at an elementary level of academia.

Nunes says her school’s approach to this issue is putting the children in a class similar to study hall where a teacher can help students in that same grade level one on one. She also says that when teachers collaborate and work with a student to help them excel, they do better. As EduNation Revolution has touched on, teachers should have heart. Nunes originally became a teacher because she wanted to make school a safe place for children. Just by talking to her, you can really tell that she has a passion for the kids' education and personal development-- and she really has dedicated her career to helping children succeed.

While schools do their best to provide an equal education to all students and prepare them for success in life, the system just doesn’t make it easy.

The homeless liaison for the ABC School District, Tim Catlin, says that he and many other districts pull on all the resources they can get.

This past Friday, Feed The Children donated boxes of goods to the county to be distributed between districts and given out to the homeless children at the schools. The boxes contained things like backpacks, school supplies, snacks, and Disney books. Donations like these are what help children have the chance at fitting in with their peers and staying current with the curriculum.

Angela says she wouldn’t have even made it UCLA if it weren’t for a nonprofit tutor that she had at her homeless shelter. He was from School On Wheels, which sends tutors to help homeless children who can’t stay after school to get the help they need because they have to be at the shelter by check-in time to secure their bed space. Angela's tutor got her through calculus AP and even took her to his college, where she saw a college campus for the first time. She says he inspired her dreams of going to UCLA and made her believe she could do it.

There are many other nonprofits that donate goods to schools, give grants, and provide a safe get-away for homeless children. However, not every child ends up at UCLA like Angela. I think the system could use so much more help and innovation--from the government to the districts, even to the people who have money and are willing to help, but don’t know how. If this issue became as prominent in the media as ALS has, maybe more children could have a chance at graduating and pursing careers to break the cycle of homelessness.