Homeless kids adrift during strike
LA schoolchildren lose their island of stability
LOS ANGELES – Skid Row is a tough place to raise kids.
Hundreds of this city’s most desperately poor wander filthy streets at all hours. Tents spread across sidewalks sometimes for entire blocks, forcing people to thread their way along the gutters of busy streets. Trash piles up everywhere, and alleys reek of urine.
Aware of the dangers, Sarah Hawkins kept a tight grip on daughter Amira, 7, and son Braden, 2, as she emerged onto San Pedro Street from the locked door of the refuge where the family lives, the Union Rescue Mission. A few feet away, a hulking shirtless man assaulted another only minutes before, for apparently just having locked eyes with him.
Normally, Amira would be attending elementary school on this raindrenched day. But the strike by teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District has changed those plans for her and countless homeless kids.
For Hawkins, keeping Amira out of school was a question of safety. “They don’t have teaching today,” said Hawkins, 27. With the schools operating with temporary staff, she fears they “don’t have time to background-check.”
The strike was one more headache for Hawkins, who already has her share. Living at a mission isn’t easy. She usually works for a package delivery service but doesn’t earn enough to pay rent. The rescue mission, the oldest and largest in downtown Los Angeles accepting families as well as single men and women, has been home for six months.
A car, a motel, a shelter
The Hawkins family isn’t alone. L.A. Unified classifies 17,934 of its students as homeless. They may live in a car, trailer or RV parked on the street or in a yard, crammed into a house with other families, or a motel or rented garage. More than 1,000 live in shelters.
The Rev. Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, saw the fallout that the strike would create. He said he started spreading word to the families under his wing – and there are many, with 272 children living in the sprawling facility at one point last fall – about healthy alternative activities if they elected to hold their kids out of school. The strike, he said, is tough on children.
“Kids need to get out the shelter and enjoy school for the day,” he said. “School remains the stabilizing factor, the real way youngsters are going to get out of homelessness. It’s a struggle, especially in Los Angeles.”
It’s a struggle that’s not without its victories. Some kids have gone straight from living in the mission to college, including one who was accepted to Cornell University, he said. The mission takes school seriously.
An education, and meals, too
Every weekday, a school bus takes about 50 children to the public school about six blocks away. There at a sparkling, modern Ninth Street School, principal Dean Simpson said he and teachers make them feel welcome and cater to their special needs. School is “a place of stability,” he said.
The school not only provides education, but also meals – breakfasts, lunches and sometimes suppers.
That’s a special challenge this week because of the strike. As Simpson spoke at the gate, his teachers circled in front of him, chanting and waving picket signs. The teachers are asking for more counselors and nurses at schools, among other demands.
“We’re out here to fight for our students,” said Pamela Sanders, a specialeducation teacher in the preschool who is also Ninth Street’s union homeless coordinator.
With the strike, Sanders can’t be there as she normally would. But teachers were intent on not abandoning struggling families that weren’t sending their kids to school. Using donations from grocers, the union was trying to make sure homeless families were eating. They put together breakfast kits that included a banana or mandarin orange, a breakfast bar and yogurt. For protein, Sanders said she bought some Lunchables.
It has been a struggle, however, to get the kits to families. “I’m just sad,” Sanders said.
Calling a teacher ‘Mom’
While Los Angeles’ homeless are best known for populating Skid Row, many are spread out across the city. For them, too, the strike is taking a toll.
Jose Razo, principal at Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima, said 23 percent of his 704 students are classified as homeless. In the heavily Latino, working-class neighborhood on the city’s northern edge, caring for homeless students is a matter of listening.
“They’ll say, ‘ We live in a car.’ (Or) they’ll say: ‘We got kicked out last night. We had to live in a motel,’ ” Razo said. Then it is a matter of getting the help they need, such as a social worker or school psychologist.
“If they need shoes, we will get them,” said Razo, who grew up homeless and worked his way to college. “I am humbled at the generosity of people.”
Rosa Rubalcava, who has taught second grade in 21 years as a teacher, has seen the problems first-hand. She’ll discover a student who is living with his family in a shed or a motor home. The stress of a temporary or crowded living situation helps explain why a student forgot his homework or that a vacation day is coming up.
Rubalcava, a mother of four, said her own kids wonder why she’s buying clothes that aren’t for their own family.
Back at the Union Rescue Mission, that sense of caring teachers certainly seemed to play out with the Hawkins family. Pausing before venturing out with her kids into the mean streets, Sarah Hawkins noted the role that school plays in Amira’s young life.
What does she think of being out of school for the week?
“It’s good, but it’s bad, because I like to go to school.”