Schools Still

See Surges
in Homeless Students
BY SARAH D. SPARKS
From Education Week
In the year after Hurricane
Katrina buffeted the Gulf Coast,
Denise Riemer and Larissa Dick-
inson, both homeless education
liaisons for their school district,
saw more than 2,000 homeless
students and their families in
the public schools in Mobile,
AL.
This year, in the wake of an
ongoing and far broader eco-
nomic storm, the two women
have seen 5,302 homeless stu-
dents in the district.
"This is pretty amazing be-
cause we're not even halfway
through the year and we're
already up," Riemer said. "I
can't believe the number of
food-stamp applications I've
processed so far for unaccom-
panied youth. We have new
students about every day."
The Great Recession caused
by the 2008 economic and hous-
ing crisis has technically ended,
but the number of homeless
students nationwide continues
to swell, as school districts' ca-
pacity to help them shrinks.
If added together, homeless
students now would make up
the largest school district in the
country—at nearly 1.17 million,
more than the entire student
population of New York City
public schools. Their numbers
have grown 24% in the last
three years and 10% in the last
year alone, according to a new
federal analysis released by the
National Center for Homeless
Education, part of the Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Greens-
boro. Forty states have seen a

Sarah D. Sparks is assistant editor. Education Week. Condensed,

with permission, from Education Week, 33 (November 6,2013). Copy-
right 2013 Editorial Projects in Education, Inc. For more information,
visit www.edweek.org.

March 2014 31
 THE EDUCATION DIGEST
rise in their homeless-student
populations in 2011-12, and 10
of those faced a jump of 20%
or more.
"We've been seeing these
increases year after year," said
Barbara Duffield, policy direc-
tor of the National Association
for the Education of Homeless
Children and Youth in Wash-
ington. "Homeless education
has stopped being just a few
programs in shelters and has
become part of the fabric of
school systems."
No Shelter
Federal law defines as home-
less any child who doesn't have
a "fixed, regular, and adequate
nighttime residence." The num-
ber of children living in shelters
has remained relativelyfiat,the
study found, but the numbers
doubling-up with friends or fam-
ily, living in hotels and motels,
and those without any kind of
shelter at all have increased
since 2009.
In Mobile County, the family
and social safety nets that tra-
ditionally protected families in
trouble have been strained by
prolonged financial problems.
"We're seeing more and more
families living in hotels and
motels, and we had not seen
that before," Dickinson said.
"With the economic hardships.
32 www.eddigest.com
people are not able tofindjobs.
So families who might have been
able to take in other families at
another time can't now because
they are barely scraping by
themselves."
As a study by the Southern
Education Foundation reported
last month, students in poverty
make up majorities of public
school students in 17 states.
Reasons for Leaving
"With economic hardship,
families are giving their children
up or placing them with differ-
ent family members," Dickinson
said. "And domestic violence
is becoming more common, so
students are also leaving home
for that reason, too."
Catherine Brakel, now 18,
was 15 and a sophomore at Alma
Bryant High School in Irvington,
AL, in 2009, when her mother
and stepfather both lost their
jobs and the family started
moving frequently. Catherine
got a job at a local Waffle House
restaurant to help out—but she
also startedfightingmore often
with her stepfather. "Me and my
stepdad had a lot of problems,
so I just moved out when I was
16," she said. The state's age of
majority is 19, so even with a
steady job, Catherine couldn't
sign a lease, buy a car, or do
more than tread water.
 Schools See Surges in Homeless Students
"I didn't want anybody to
know, because it was embar-
rassing and I thought I could do
everything myself," she said. "1
really didn't have time to go to
football games or participate in
the things everyone else partici-
pated in, because I didn't have
any free time at all."
Her basketball coach finally
took notice of Catherine's situa-
tion late in her junior year, when
she moved from one friend's
home to another but still need-
ed regular rides after practice.
"I was living with a friend in
Theodore [a neighboring town],
but it was too far away and 1
was having problems getting to
school," she said.
Meeting Families' Needs
Transportation is always
one of the biggest problems
for homeless students, Riemer
said. The district got a 12.5%
increase in federal homeless
education grants this year, to
about $63,000, and is putting
most of it towards emergency
shelter and travel, such as buy-
ing students bus passes and gas
vouchers. She and Dickinson
have coordinated on behalf of
the district with local churches,
community groups, and local
agencies to provide care for
students and their families, but,
"everyone—all the agencies and
March 2014
foundations who work with our
[homeless students]—is ex-
periencing budget problems,"
Riemer said.
In the 17,000-student Adrian
(MI) public schools, district
homeless liaison Beth Mc-
Cullough has seen an increase
in homeless students, with and
without families, every year for
most of the last decade. "In '08-
'09, we got to a point where we
almost doubled in a year," she
recalled.
Today, that growth has
slowed a little—704 homeless
students were enrolled this
year, up from 641 last year—but
the cash-strapped state slashed
all state funding for homeless
students by half in the past
year.
Adrian schools are not alone.
While a portion of federal edu-
cation support for students
in poverty is earmarked for
homeless students, the National
Center for Homeless Education
study found only 23% of school
districts receive direct home-
less education grants, called
McKinney-Vento funds. Those
grants have grown by 16% from
2009 to 2012, not enough to keep
pace with the rise in homeless
populations over the same pe-
riod of time or make up for dwin-
dling state funds. And just last
week, stimulus-related boosts
33
 THE EDUCATION DIGEST
to federal food aid for the poor
expired, leading to $5 billion
less nationwide.
With the nearest homeless
shelter 45 miles away, the dis-
trict has set up the Road to
Graduation, a program mod-
eled after foreign-exchange pro-
grams for students, in which
local families house and mentor
unaccompanied homeless stu-
dents for a year or two to help
them stay in school and make it
fo graduation.
One host parent, the Rev. Joel
Sarraulf of St. John's Lutheran
Church, said there was a "steep
learning curve" for both his fam-
ily members and the student
they took in, Gabe, whose mi-
grant farm worker family could
not support him. "A lot of our
role with Gabe was simply being
parents for him, trying to teach
him some responsibility and
preparing for the future, and he
liked the security of knowing, 'If
you say something, you're going
to be there for me.' "
"I greatly feel for teachers
in the public school system,"
Sarrault said. "There are a lot of
teachers who went out of their
way for sfudents like Gabe, but
teachers aren't supposed to be
parents."
For now, local schools and
community groups are picking
up the cost of the program in
34 www.eddigest.com
Adrian, but McCullough has
convinced many school officials
to fake homeless students or
keep them in a stable placement
by arguing that federal or state
homeless grants would pick up
fhe tab.
"I know what's coming," Mc-
Cullough said. "I'm concerned
about what happens when home-
less kids become expensive kids."
Homeless sfudents are much
more likely than even other
students in poverty to have
special needs. The National
Center on Homeless Education
report noted that the number
of homeless students with lim-
ited English proficiency rose
13% from 2009 to 2012, and fhe
number of homeless students
with disabilities jumped 24% in
the same time.
Homeless students are get-
ting more expensive in terms of
school accountability, too.
Recent studies in New York
City and Chicago have found
homeless sfudents often end up
clustered in high-poverty and
low-performing schools, and
can be disproportionately hurt
when low-performing schools
close.
Tracking Proficiency
Since 2010, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Education has required
all districts—not just those
 Schools See Surges in Homeless Students

receiving federal homeless ed- sessment in 2011-12, and of

ucation grants—to track the those, only 44% were deemed
number of homeless students proficient.
enrolled and tested in math- Catherine, who graduated
ematics and reading, as well this past spring, said teachers
as their proficiency in those were generally understanding of
subjects. (Districts must now her occasional late assignments
also track homeless students' and missed school, and she
science proficiency.) worked hard to keep her grades
About half of the 381,000 up, "because I knew grades were
homeless students enrolled in all I had," she said. "I couldn't
grades 3-12 who were tested play basketball in college. I'm
in reading in 2011-12 met their good, but not that good."
state's proficiency targets, an With help from the local
increase in both the number Joseph Treadwell Charitable
tested and the number deemed Foundation, Catherine won a full
proficient since 2010-11, but still scholarship to South Alabama
less than a quarter of all the University in Mobile, where she
homeless students enrolled in is studying to be a registered
schools at that time. nurse. •
Testing participation and
proficiency likewise rose in
math from 2010-11 to 2011-12,
but the statistics were more
dismal for homeless students
in high school than for those
in elementary school. Three
out of four homeless students
in grades 3-8 took their state's
proficiency test in 2011-12, and
48% of those students met the
standard. In high school, how-
ever, only 15% of homeless
students took state tests, and
42% of those test-takers were
proficient.
Likewise, only 24% of home- "We didn't buy you that
less students across all grades computer so you could
took their state's science as- bad-mouth us in your blog."

March 2014 35
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