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School district mission widens

 

With homelessness on the rise, Sac City is working to keep kids in classrooms.
by Christina Jewett, Sacramento Bee Staff Writer, December 22, 2002


Being homeless meant moving across the street for Fruitridge Elementary School first-grader Cameron Thomas.


His old Oak Park house has a "For Rent" sign in the window. The Thomases couldn't afford to live there because the $650-a-month rent increased to $900 after the landlord fixed up the house.

After school, he now joins his mother and five siblings at Sacramento Area Emergency Housing. They are among a growing group of area students who keep moving from motels to friends' houses or from streets to cars.

In the past three years, the number of homeless children in the Sacramento City Unified School District has nearly tripled, from 332 in 1999 to 919 in 2001, said Monica McRho, district Homeless Program coordinator. The preschool level has the most homeless students.

This year, new federal laws gave homeless coordinators more power to ensure that children in flux can ride school buses and attend school.

Although Cameron's family no longer lives in the Oak Park home, living in the shelter doesn't bother the first-grader, said mother Carrie Thomas. He's excited to go Christmas caroling with other Fruitridge students.

The transition isn't so smooth for most families, and wasn't two weeks ago, when Carrie Thomas was nine months pregnant with her sixth child and unsure where her children would live when their 60-day stay at the shelter would end.

"The hardest part of keeping the kids in school is not knowing where we're going to be," Thomas said.

In a few weeks, her children will need to ride two buses and a light-rail train to their schools from Mather Transitional Housing in Ranch Cordova, where Thomas and her children were recently accepted to live for two years.

Preserving a sense of stability is what Sacramento City Unified's McRho tries to do when she helps families who've lost housing, working with transportation, housing and food agencies and schools to keep children in the education system.

"School is a safe haven for the kids," she said. "It's a place where they feel normal."

McRho said the scarcity of Section 8 housing and increasing home prices have driven many working poor people into her office.

"We've seen (school) district employees who've ended up homeless," she said.

She hears stories of families' credit ruined by eviction notices, even if the renters never fell behind on rent. Other families, like the Thomases, are squeezed out when landlords decide to fix up their properties and raise the rents.

California leads the nation in the number of homeless teens and children, reporting 289,000 in a U.S. Department of Education report to Congress. Of those, 151,000 attend school regularly, according to the 2000 report.

Hilary Krogh, coordinator of Project TEACH for the Sacramento County Office of Education, helps districts identify and reach out to homeless children. Project TEACH employees obtain Regional Transit tickets for students in need and work in shelters to connect families with services.

About 4,800 homeless children were in the county during the past school year. Krogh's office served nearly twice as many homeless children last year as it did three years ago, with school districts learning to spot homeless children by taking cues from irregular attendance and behavior.

The Sacramento County Task Force for the Education of Homeless Children has met quarterly since 1991.

Beginning this summer, each district will be required to name a homeless coordinator under the updated federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

Shirley Abrams, who works in the California Department of Education, said roughly one-third of the state's districts have named a liaison.

The act also funneled $6.9 million in grants into the state to fund programs for educating homeless children. Abrams said the money goes to programs that meet needs -- counseling, tutoring and providing rides to a child's school of origin, even if they've moved away.

So far, grants have been awarded to Rio Linda Union, Sacramento City Unified, San Juan Unified, Elk Grove Unified, Grant Joint Union High, North Sacramento and Placerville school districts, Krogh said.

Also, the No Child Left Behind Act, signed Jan. 8 by President Bush, reduces red tape for homeless parents trying to enroll children in school, requiring that districts -- not parents -- track down records.

"(The new regulations) try to emphasize with people that these are families in crisis," said Barbara Duffield, education director for the National Coalition for the Homeless. "If a house burned down or a mother is running from domestic violence, we want schools to realize that they didn't put the immunization records in a nice neat bag."

McRho said she's employed staff members and interns who've become frustrated trying to track homeless families. She said about 30 percent of the families she works with are "a moving target."

"People get angry at the parents," she said. "The kids never asked for it. They really have to separate themselves from the parent to serve the kid."

Krogh said school districts can help homeless families by providing services at each school, instead of just at district offices.

"Is there a shelter around the corner or down the street? School sites know that children are there, (it's) a matter of developing a plan to serve those children," she said.

Abrams, who works mainly in Los Angeles County, said programs can help children enter new classrooms and stay at their schools.

But she said the main problems facing families are affordable housing, living wages and rent subsidies.

"Schools are only one part of it," she said. "It takes the whole community to address all of the problems."

About the Writer
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The Bee's Christina Jewett can be reached at (916) 321-1201 or cjewett@sacbee.com.

 

 

 

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