Homeless kids rely on educators, social programs
In our weekly series on homelessness, this story is the second in a three-part special miniseries about students experiencing homelessness.
CHICO >> When children are homeless or living in poverty, their daily life and education are heavily impacted. That fact is well known to the educators and administrators working at Butte County’s schools, particularly after the Camp Fire.
Identifying the markers of homelessness and poverty starts at the elementary grade levels. However, from kindergarten to 12th grade, students face different challenges and the county’s school districts are trying to address the increased need since the fire.
Solutions in Chico
To help students facing homelessness or living insecurity, educators and school districts have some local and federal resources. At the federal level, the McKinny-Vento Act is the main tool that ensures that all children have the right to attend school even if they lose their home or are in the following living situations:
• living in emergency shelters or transitional living programs;
• staying temporarily with friends or relatives due to inadequate housing;
• staying in motels, campgrounds, cars or other temporary housing;
• Schools that identify high numbers of homeless or foster children who qualify for coverage under McKinny-Vento can rely on case workers assigned to their school to make connections with each student.
Each district also assigns a case manager to each school, according to Sheri Hanni of the Butte County Office of Education. Hanni said of the schools in the county, Chico has the most resources currently available to kids identified as homeless or socioeconomically-disadvantaged, including the Torres Shelter, Esplanade House as well as The Boys and Girls Club of North Valley and assigned targeted case managers for each school.
Ted Sullivan serves as the homeless and foster youth liaison at the Chico Unified School District’s elementary office, and said at any given time throughout the year, “between 400-500 kids are considered covered by the federal McKinny-Vento Act.” Children can be covered by this act for one year even if they aren’t legally homeless but still fall into another category for home insecurity, such as living in different foster homes or in another family’s home.
Under this law, children can get help with transportation to school, free and reduced lunch (as supported by state legislation, Senate Bill 265, in California) and support from a targeted case manager. Sullivan said every school in the district has a designated case manager who is similar to a social worker, assigned to working one-onone with children.
This has been a crucial resource after the Camp Fire, which caused a “huge spike” in the number of children experiencing housing insecurity for extended periods of time, Sullivan said. Over 1,000 became homeless after the fire.
“These kids … are in a lot of transition on a consistent basis,” he said, adding that hundreds of students have left the district, returned and then moved again in the past year.
However, a divide was also clear between students who became homeless after the fire and students whose families had been homeless for years. Children from Paradise were more likely to have had more stable family situations prior to the fire, he said.
That’s why having targeted case workers available has been indispensable. Their job is to check on foster or homeless children and work on what can be done to improve their access to education as well as teaching and resources like food, school supplies, textbooks and even clothing.
“All of our sites will know who a family is, if they need anything, and we can match up services to them,” Sullivan said. “We’re lucky to have that job at least parttime at every school.”
Oroville challenges
Oroville faces higher rates of socio-economic challenges starting in elementary schools (with an overall rate of about 73% students measured as socioeconomically disadvantaged), and has struggled to respond to student issues in the past, even resulting in new problems like high suspension rates.
In response, some legislators have made it their goal to work towards raising more funds to invest in local students trying to go to college. Oroville City Councilor Janet Goodson has worked with Parent Partner Youth 4 Change and said Oroville is an example of where families need to work with educators to fight for investments in their children, with high rates of housing and food insecurity among children.
“I work with a lot of these kids and at-risk sectors of our youth,” Goodson said.
“So, I take this personally. The (Oroville) dynamic is so unique. So you have to bring in those that have that skill set. … I see more and more of the mental health services working directly with behavioral health. We now have components that are addressing the homelessness problem and we see that in the high schools too.”
If students are struggling at home or don’t have a stable place to live, it can get more complicated when they transfer from one of seven Oroville elementary districts to either Las Plumas High and Oroville High. Principals at both schools, Las Plumas’ Dan Ramos and Oroville’s Cristi Tellechea, acknowledged the socioeconomic struggles unique to their location in the county which are often reflected at their school.
Las Plumas in particular has a high population of students facing housing insecurity, food scarcity, homelessness or all three. Ramos said insecure housing is the biggest issue faced by many students attending his school.
“The number of kids who are living with family members other than their parents — extended family, living with their friends or some kind of alternate thing — is very high here,” Ramos said. “I would say it’s higher than most communities.”
At Oroville High, Principal Tellechea and other staff try to “meet kids where they’re at,” she said, in order to foster connections and decrease absenteeism.
Chronic absenteeism, defined as students who miss at least 10% of academic days throughout the school year with or without excused absences, is at 22% at Oroville High — “one of our problems is fluctuating enrollment,” Tellechea said.
Tellechea said home visits and a school social worker meeting with parents and students are used at Oroville High to help combat the effects of absenteeism and identify children struggling with homelessness or meal insecurity.
On the ridge
Former Paradise Unified School District superintendent Michelle John said in the fall that ongoing issues like power shut-offs in cold temperatures were huge problems for morale and keeping students on the ridge and in school.
The new superintendent, Tom Taylor, said the district is also working to try to provide enough help, like counseling and support, to students who have returned, “but not all socio-emotional needs can be met.”
Paradise also has assigned counselors at all schools. However, after decades in the town, Taylor acknowledged that with Paradise’s past socioeconomic issues, it is hard to tell what will happen now
as families struggle to return to stable housing, or build homes on the ridge, and children continue to live in unstable situations.
“We know that the price of a home right now is very expensive. So can people afford to rebuild?” he asked. “And insurance. So what is that going to do to the makeup of the community? Some people who maybe were socioeconomically disadvantaged before the fire, even with their insurance proceeds, may not be able to come back and build a home.”
Relying on social programs
School districts rely on funding for more support in order to try to address the increased need of resources for kids facing homelessness or other socioeconomic burdens. For now, organizations like The Boys and Girls Club of the North Valley remain necessary aides to Paradise and other communities which need help managing many unique cases of kids experiencing housing insecurity.
The club expanded after the fire, with multiple locations already active throughout the county and added new case manager positions.
Unfortunately, the social organization is struggling to continue providing the same level of services across the district with fewer donors — and no housing for volunteers.
“The challenge is that when you have a lack of housing, you have a lack of human services — not enough helpers,” CEO Rashell Brobst said. “For so long we’ve been in the trenches … now people are getting tired.” She said she has hoped that one possibility to get more helpers in the area could be by activating AmeriCorps, but hasn’t seen that become a possibility yet.
Without sufficient funding after losing an entire community of donors, Brobst isn’t sure how long the club can keep up.
For now, she said Butte County locations are training current staff to take on more duties and better handle the current need. Staff are also focusing on more outlets for children still struggling after the fire, like art and music therapy for “healing.”
“Kids really need things to seem normal again. … They need a sense of normalcy,” Brobst said.