SCOE addresses needs of homeless
Consortium report compiled by five COEs yielded ways to support homeless kids and identified best practices, says Estrella-Henderson
Among the nation’s homeless, which may swell to more than 3.5 million during the year, some 1.5 million of them are K-12 students, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In the Golden State, the number of students experiencing homelessness has increased by 48 percent in the past decade, higher than in any other state, with some 270,000 such students in 2019, or about 4.3 percent of the total enrollment. In Solano County, which had 66,000 students enrolled in 2019, slightly more than 1,400 of them, or 2.1 percent, were homeless, according to data gathered by the University of California, Los Angeles. About 2 percent of students in each of five Bay Area counties in a consortium — besides Solano, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara — were identified as homeless in early 2020 before the COVID-19 outbreak. Such were the findings, among many about students experiencing homelessness, in a report released Monday: “Addressing the Needs of Students Experiencing Homelessness During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” It was commissioned by the Alameda County Office of Education in its work as a “geographic lead agency” in California’s system of support. Solano County Office of Education staff contributed in partnership with other regional COEs and with WestEd, an Oakland-based nonpartisan, nonprofit research, development and service agency, according to Jennifer Leonard, director of communications and community engagement for SCOE. The report, she said, features promising strategies drawn from the expertise and perspective of 20 county administrators. It helps schools put into place ways to address these needs in five Bay Area counties: Solano, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara. “All counties noted that with many schools closed to in-person learning, staff at the district and school levels sought out creative approaches for identifying, reaching and serving students experiencing homelessness,” said Leonard in the statement. “Increasing mental health supports, food and technology distribution with local districts, and the creation of online modules for teachers and staff to build capacity to support students experiencing homelessness during distance learning are among the effective responses identified to address this challenge.” In the section pertaining to Solano County, the report’s authors noted the SCOE, which oversees services to six school districts, provided help with student homelessness to two dis- tricts under the McKenney-Vento Act in 2019, down from three districts in 2018. (The act is the 1987 law, signed by President Ronald Reagan, that provides federal dollars for homeless shelter programs and defines student homelessness.) To reach and teach students experiencing homeslessness, the SCOE indicated that its goal is “to know every McKinney Vento student by name and need all year.” The county office also made it a point to provide tech devices and wifi hotspots, and, after the pandemic, the county offered professional development and resource materials in an online format. The report also showed that county districts, in their effort to help homeless students, continued to offer free meals at drivethrough locations; expanded student mental health services through partnerships; and collaborated “more frequently and intentionally” with other agencies, among them Housing First Solano, the Solano Children’s Alliance, and Child Welfare Services, and the Pride Center, the latter to help homeless children forced from their family homes due to their sexual orientation or gender identities. Among the problems surfacing in the past year were an increase in homelessness due to wildland fires, the economic downturn, the scarcity of affordable rental housing, and educators who are missing the human connection of in-person teaching and are experiencing their own personal traumas and family stresses due to the pandemic. “Students experiencing homelessness live in communities with different resources and challenges,” said Lisette Estrella-Henderson, Solano County superintendent of schools. “Even before the pandemic, student homelessness was increasing, and many schools were working to respond to the needs of our most vulnerable students.” Andrea Lemos, SCOE’s deputy superintendent of educational services and student programs, added, “This report highlights examples of how to provide equity-focused, virtual professional learning opportunities and modules to support youth and expand mental health screening and supports for students in Solano county.“The Bay Area Consortium’s five county offices of education convened monthly during the pandemic to better understand regional challenges to homelessness and investigate current county and district strategies “to combat the unique barriers facing students experiencing homelessness,” noted Leonard, adding that that approach “was a pivot and expansion from the previous work of the Consortium, which focused on sharing approaches for improving outcomes for students experiencing homelessness with an emphasis on reducing chronic absenteeism.”