Chuck Currie asked if I would mention his recent post on educating homeless children in Multnomah County, and I’m pleased to do so. Here’s how I summarize his argument: (1) Federal law prohibits local districts from using federal dollars to educate homeless children in separate schools. (2) Multnomah County pays the Community Transitional School (CTS) to provide 10 slots in its school for homeless children. (3) CTS is a worthy project run by well-meaning people, but it doesn’t offer the range of activities that the regular public schools do. (4) It’s time to upgrade the quality of education for the homeless. (5) Therefore the City of Portland, Multnomah County, and the school district should work on how to move homeless children to the regular schools.
This brought to mind how we get to work on problems. The first reaction is to (a) do nothing. This is followed by (b) doing something that is not all that great, but is better than doing nothing. This may in turn be followed by (c) doing something that is pretty good. I read Mr. Currie to say that when CTS was founded, it was a (c) solution: "something that is pretty good," but now it is a (b) solution: "something that is not all that great, but is better than nothing." And (if I may again cast his ideas in my words) he’s calling on the local governments to work together to come up with a (c) solution: putting homeless children in the regular public schools. (I should add that CTS must be run efficiently; the contract with CTS, linked to from Mr. Currie’s post, pays CTS $5200 per student slot per year, which is about what the state pays for basic school support. Out of this, CTS provides the school and also transportation to and from the school.)
The difficulty with getting homeless children into school is that they are, well, homeless. They live in cars, basements, shelters, or odd corners, and they move around a lot, meaning that their neighborhood school in October probably won’t be their neighborhood school in April. If they have to move from one school to another three times a year as their parents change neighborhoods then their education will be choppy at best and nonexistent at worst. Also, the school that was convenient in October might be three bus rides away in April, a disincentive to staying enrolled there.
The real question I have about CTS and homeless children, though, isn’t Mr. Currie’s question. He asks how we can move homeless children from special schools to the regular schools. My question is, if CTS is serving only 10 homeless children at a time with the county funds, how are we serving the other 1800 homeless children in the district? I don’t know, but Chuck Currie has inspired me to try to find out.
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Project Return, the well regarded PPS program which had their budget cut 70%, is the program when need to fund. I posted a PDF file with their 2004-2005 annual report with the rest of my post. This is the program that works with these 1800+ kids. Thanks!
Here’s a site with a lot of official federal requirements on education rights of homeless kids.
Other large groups of kids educationally underserved are foster children and and children whose parents move around the metro area several times a year.
I think such kids would be best served by arranging transport to keep them in the same school rather than have them change schools as they move from attendance area to attendance area.
I’m a former foster child and current child advocate.
I’d like to refer you to the following web page:
http://www.homelessfamiliesfoundation.org/
I recently visited the Dowd Education Center, as a visiting librarian. I was very impressed. The staff of the Homeless Families Foundation have earned their excellent reputation.
Although this facility provides after-school and summer school care for children, as well as nutritious meals, and is therefore a supplement (rather than a substitute) for Columbus Public Schools, I think that the model that they have created will prove helpful to you.
I realize that this will be a long-distance communication, since you are in Oregon and they are in Ohio, but I think contacting them will be worth your time.
Lisa