Ed. Dept. plan for homeless kids falls short: advocates
New York City advocates for homeless students say the city Education Department’s initial proposal for spending millions in federal stimulus dollars doesn’t go nearly far enough to address “abysmal” attendance rates for students living in shelters.
The city has to submit its plan for allocating $24 million in federal stimulus dollars earmarked for homeless students to the state by the end of the month, and advocates have been pushing the city to spend a big chunk on hiring an additional 100 staffers to work in shelters helping families with attendance struggles.
The city already committed to hiring 50 such staffers with an earlier pot of federal money.
But in initial plans presented to advocates, the Education Department didn’t commit to hiring the 100 requested shelter staffers, instead proposing a range of other initiatives that advocates say won’t actually get to the root of the problem.
“The administration’s current proposal for spending millions in federal funding does not address the most fundamental problem, which is that children in shelter are not getting to school in the first place,” said Jennifer Pringle, director of Advocates for Children’s Learners in Temporary Housing Project.
The roughly 28,000 city students who spend time in one of the city’s 200 family homeless shelters in a given year have long struggled with attendance, and it got worse during the pandemic. Students living in shelters averaged 77% attendance last year, compared with 90% for students in permanent housing. That number rose slightly, to 79%, in October 2021, the last month for which numbers were available — 11 points shy of students in stable housing.
Advocates say families in shelters often face an array of logistical and bureaucratic challenges — including arranging transportation for long commutes — that make it especially difficult to get their kids to school each day.
“For about four to five months, my son was not attending school,” said Comfort Mensah, a Bronx mom who was forced to move into a shelter with her son Gabriel, 3, after she lost her apartment in December 2020.
The boy required a specialized program to accommodate his learning disability, and Mensah struggled to reach anyone at the Education Department who could help her find one near the shelter.
“It was very frustrating and overwhelming. You feel like you just want to give up,” she said. “It would have been very helpful” to have a dedicated Education Department staffer right in the shelter to help, she added.
In a letter earlier this month, dozens of advocacy groups urged the department to use some its federal money to hire 100 additional “community coordinators” to work in shelters — a request echoed by some City Council members.
But in a draft plan shared earlier this month, Education Department officials didn’t include plans to hire the extra shelter staffers. It included a proposal to expand access to a sophisticated attendance-tracking platform to all the city’s family shelters, along with plans to grow after-school programming and reading support at shelters, according to a version of the presentation viewed by the Daily News. Advocates say that’s insufficient. “More tools and pilot programs without investment in staff are bound for failure,” said Catherine Trapani, executive director of Homeless Services United, adding that existing shelter workers already have too much on their plates.
Education Department officials pointed out that the one-time federal infusion can’t fund salaries indefinitely, and that the agency already has 117 other staffers spread across shelters. “We are being intentional with all funds to avoid making long-term commitments with short-term resources and continue to work toward removing barriers to success in the lives of our most vulnerable students,” said Education Deaprtment spokeswoman Suzan Sumer.