City urged to fill jobs to aid homeless kidse

Ed. Dept. has openings: advocates

More than 20 Education Department jobs dedicated to working with homeless students are sitting vacant at a time when kids without secure housing need additional support more than ever, advocates say.

“Remote learning has been disastrous for many of the more than 110,000 students who are homeless, and the city needs to marshal every resource to assist these students,” more than 30 advocacy groups wrote in a Wednesday letter to Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza.

“It cannot have positions dedicated to these students sitting empty while students are missing months of school,” the letter continued.

Six of the 18 slots for regional manager in the Education Department’s Office of Students in Temporary Housing — positions designed to coordinate educational services for homeless families while overseeing 300 frontline staff in shelters and schools — remain unfilled, advocates say.

Regional managers offer crucial “supervision, guidance and training” to on-the-ground staffers including family assistants who work in shelters and social workers and community coordinators who support students in temporary housing in schools.

Advocates note the Education Department tripled the number of frontline staffers working with homeless families in recent years, but reduced the number of regional managers from 28 in 2009 — when the city’s homeless student population numbered 9,000 — to 18 currently, when the number of homeless students tops 100,000.

Other vacant positions include 12 social workers assigned to homeless students and other frontline staffers, advocates say.

Students living doubled up with family and friends may face crowded and distracting conditions for remote learning, while those living in shelters have battled spotty cell service and nonexistent Wi-Fi, advocates said.

Virtual attendance rates for students living in shelters were 13 percentage points below the city average, and 10 points lower than any other subgroup of students.

The Education Department sustained bruising budget cuts amid the economic downturn, cutting more than $1 billion from its budget between fiscal years 2020 and ’21.

Education Department spokesman Nathaniel Styer said the agency is “actively hiring to fill critical open staff positions in this office, and we are pleased to share that we will begin the hiring process to fill another five of these positions immediately.”

He said officials are also pushing for “federal stimulus aid that will allow us to hire and expand services.”