Marysville district’s homeless education program helps kids
So let’s help them provide for students; and biking today, rain or shin around the Sutter Buttes; infamous one-liners
The woman who heads up the Marysville Joint Unified School District’s Homeless Education Program had some important points to share with the Marysville Kiwanis Club meeting Thursday.
Jami Larson said there are some 242 displaced youths currently being served by the program – all ages and grades. She thinks they’ll probably have served some 300 by the end of the school year. And she explains that there are other kids who, for whatever reason – pride or fear – mask their homelessness. Also:
She said that with this year’s weather, elimination of campsites and such, there are more kids living in cars now. There could be any number of family members sleeping in a car. Just to give you an idea of what sort of lives many of them are leading. School, for many of these kids, if not most, is the only stable place in their lives.
Also, school is often the only constant food source for many of them: two meals a day, five days a week, and on the weekends and holidays they may go hungry.
We know some people who get hung up with the parenting. They blame the situation on parents. If kids don’t make it to school, they blame the parents. Etc. That misses the point. Some of those parents are messed up; some of them may have bad attitudes toward school systems from their own past experiences … doesn’t matter. What matters is that we do what we can to help the kids.
The program tries to help kids through all phases of their education. “We want them to participate fully,” Larson said. They will try to get older students shoes for athletics, clothes for proms, robes for graduation, etc.
What does the program help with? Clothing, school supplies, gas money, bus passes and more. The program helps a lot and can use our help, too.
This morning, for instance, Suncrest Bank is making a shredder available for folks doing their spring cleaner who want to safely be rid of documents. Show up from 9 a.m.-1 a.m. at 700 Plumas Street in Yuba City. In exchange for them helping you get rid of those old records, you could bring along some school supplies to donate to the program.
Or you can arrange to make a cash donation (or if you’re a member of a service club or a business owner or manager and want to make a bequest) you can call the office at 749-6900. Help them out now; or help them out in the late summer as the school year starts and the demand for funds is heaviest. * Let’s do the rain dance in reverse. Here’s hoping the weather lets up enough today to allow some fun on the road. Today is the 33rd annual Bike Around the Buttes. It gives a good number of area residents an opportunity to get out in the country, get some exercise, and enjoy some great scenery.
Proceeds go to the YubaSutter Diabetes Resource Center and Support Group.
Rain or shine, nice riding, everyone, and thanks for helping a good cause. (Day-ofride registration is available for any of three different levels of challenge – the starting area is at the Sutter Youth Organization building at 7740 Butte House Road, Sutter.)
* Famous one-liners (or maybe two-liners … and not really famous … whatever):
Today a man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation towards the local swimming pool. I gave him a glass of water.
I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
If I had a dollar for every girl that found me unattractive, they would eventually find me attractive.