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School district hopes to be anchor for homeless students

Pat Schneider  —  10/16/2008 6:33 am

That is sometimes the function -- although not the intent, really, of the TEP program -- which provides academic and emotional support for students whose chaotic life circumstances can set them grades behind their classmates.

The Zavala kids are among more than 280 students identified as homeless in the school district in the first six weeks of the school year. That number is a rolling count, updated throughout the school year as the district as students become homeless.

The district is on pace to exceed last year's total, which was up sharply from the year before. The nation's growing economic crisis is a likely culprit for at least some of the increase. One longtime TEP teacher says more homeless students are coming from established Madison families, not just those who have recently arrived to the city without housing.

As a result, homeless students are now in the attendance areas of schools all over the city -- and not just those near homeless shelters and motels used to house homeless families. As a result, school officials this year are re-examining how best to use their limited resources, said Nancy Yoder, director of alternative programs. The school district now spends more than $750,000 on homeless services, but more district dollars are highly unlikely, Superintendent Dan Nerad said Thursday. District officials are preparing for a November referendum asking voters to approve increasing their spending limit by a total of $13 million over the next three years just to preserve current programs.

"There are moral and legal reasons we have to serve these children," Nerad said. "We need to be fully resourced to serve them well and not compromise overall what we are trying to do for children. But the community should understand the changing landscape."

The number of homeless children ebbs and flows with the year, as families move to Madison from other cities and states, make their way into more permanent housing or lose it, Yoder said.

Families may remain homeless for weeks or months, or it can be a more chronic condition, school officials say.

The number of children identified as homeless -- which includes those whose families are "doubling up" with friends or relatives -- also varies from year to year but is increasing.

The number of homeless children enrolled in the district rose nearly 10 percent from 564 in the 2005-2006 school year to 619 in the 2006-2007 school year and a whopping 25 percent to 776 in the 2007-2008 school year.

Services to homeless children, which include transportation and additional teaching and social work resources, cost the district $764,000 last year. Those funds came from general tax revenue, except for a $65,000 grant from the state Department of Public Instruction toward teacher salaries and a $3,000 private grant for health care for homeless students, Yoder said.

Other resources also are tapped: federal free breakfast and lunch programs are used by homeless students, and private local donations fill school supply closets at TEP schools.

Yoder attributes the rise in numbers, in part, to better identification of homeless children, especially those whose families are "doubling up." The federal law providing for access to education by homeless students requires that they be allowed to continue to attend the school they did before becoming homeless, even if they move across town -- or beyond -- to live with extended family or friends. School districts also are required to provide transportation for those children to the school in which they have been enrolled.

Families report having become homeless for a variety of reasons, Yoder said, including substance abuse by parents, physical and mental health problems, domestic violence, poor credit histories and low-paying jobs.

A big part of what the district does is try to provide stability, in coursework and school environment.

Jani Koester, an Emerson Elementary School teacher who has worked with the TEP program since its inception in 1989, said she is seeing more children become homeless in families that had been making it paycheck to paycheck "tipping on the edge and falling over. They had a job and lost it, lost their apartment."

For several years the trend has been that a smaller number of homeless families are those who have recently arrived in town and are staying at a shelter, while more of them are those who have been living in Madison and lose their housing, Koester said.

The TEP program was started at east side Emerson Elementary, located near the Salvation Army's homeless shelter, and expanded a few years later to nearby Lapham and Marquette elementary schools and O'Keeffe Middle School. Two teachers and two teacher aides supplement classroom lessons in those schools. The equivalent of 1.5 full-time social workers are dedicated to homelessness issues throughout the school district, as is a full-time clerk-secretary.

As the circumstances of homelessness for families in the district have changed, so have where homeless children attend school. Today virtually every school in the district has some homeless children. A number of elementary and middle schools not part of the TEP program had 20 or more homeless students last year; others counted only a few.

Briella Green, 8, rides in a taxi each school day to Emerson Elementary from Sun Prairie.

The family became homeless this summer after Briella's father was abruptly laid off work, Rashanna Green, Briella's mother, said in a recent interview at the townhouse where her family is doubled up with friends. The family stayed in the Salvation Army shelter over the summer, where Rashanna said she struggled to maintain discipline over Briella among the flock of kids living in such close quarters. Rashanna also has a 2-year-old and a 9-month-old.

The family considered moving to Milwaukee, where the Greens have relatives, but Briella resisted. She didn't want to leave Madison or Emerson School, Rashanna said. Her parents didn't want to leave Madison either. They had moved to Madison from Chicago in 2001 to escape a dangerous neighborhood and worried that Milwaukee would be more of the same. The family still was uncertain of what to do when the Greens ran into acquaintances at the Dane County Job Center who offered to put them up.

At school, Briella is all smiles as she talks about Emerson. "I love it. I get to learn new stuff I never knew," she said. "It's hard, but that's what makes it fun." Most fun of all is math.

She calls the daily cab ride "pretty fun," adding that she's made a friends with a boy who rides part way with her.

But at home, Briella's mother reports a change in her child since the family's housing has become so uncertain. "She's more to herself, more angry," Rashanna said.

Changes in behavior are a signal a child is having trouble coping with homelessness, Koester said. "Kids who all of a sudden don't interact like they used to, or a child who used to focus on getting work done and no longer does, or acting out. But some kids are so excited to be at school, they slide right in and are wonderful community members."

There are exceptions, but homeless children generally perform academically below "housed" children in all areas, Yoder said.

Supplemental teachers at the TEP schools give homeless students extra practice on skills if needed, and many schools use volunteer mentors to help tutor homeless and other students.

But measuring the academic gap for homeless children is difficult because many are not in a school long enough that their scores are included in standardized testing, Yoder said. They also may not be in the school district long enough to gauge whether the special attention provided has helped them catch up with their classmates.

The more mobile the family has been, the more behind the children tend to be academically, according to Koester, who says gaps of one or two grade levels are common.

Not only have there been interruptions in education as a family without stable housing moves from one place to another, but differences in curriculum from one school to another result in gaps that a child may never be able to bridge, she said.

The circumstances of homelessness also make it hard for children to find a place to practice the skills introduced in the classroom; their parents are more immediately focused on finding the family something to eat and a place to sleep rather than studying. "Most parents know education is a key component in pulling the family out of a cycle, but in the moment they may think that is something they'll be able to catch up on later, and sometimes that just doesn't happen," Koester said. "The cycle of homelessness doesn't allow it."

One population the Madison School District is struggling to identify and better serve are "unaccompanied minors," which means children not living with their legal guardian or parent, said social worker Shannon Stevens.

Most of them are teenagers in high school, but others are students in middle or even elementary school. They may be separated from a parent or guardian who is incarcerated or in drug treatment. Some have been abandoned. Most live with family members for what may be a limited period. Others are bedding down with the families of friends.

"It makes for a precarious situation, because things might be fine today, but if there is a falling out, these kids are on their own," Stevens said.

She speculated that there might be 10 to 20 such students now in the Madison School District, but said it's hard to tell because many are determined not to be identified by authorities, and the district's computer system doesn't differentiate between unaccompanied minors and other homeless students.

"Some kids know their house isn't safe, so they make a decision to live somewhere else. They don't want to live in a foster home, and they don't want the police to know." Many high school students, especially, may enroll and attend for only a few days or weeks, Stevens said.

If school officials do identify unaccompanied minors, they can make sure they have a bus pass to get back to their home school and that they get free breakfast and lunch through school programs, Stevens said.

"The district wants to do good by these kids," she said. "We try really hard."

Because of her years of experience with homeless families, Koester knows well the local support system, and so can steer homeless families to local shelters and to a network of services that can provide clothing, job search assistance and other help. Stabilizing the family helps stabilize the child, school officials say.

Delia Torres says it was fate, or maybe God's grace, that led her to Emerson after she had exhausted contacts in town who housed her and her children temporarily after they relocated from Tomah.

"The teachers were very, very welcoming," she said. "They gave me open arms. They made sure my kids had what they needed."

Just days off the street and back in school, her children seemed happier, Torres said, as she watched the school bus roll away from the Salvation Army shelter.

She would head off for a day of job hunting, she said, talking with gratitude and hope about where she and her children had landed and their future plans.

"My children deserve a better future," she said, biting back tears. "They deserve a better life."

Pat Schneider  —  10/16/2008 6:33 am