BACK TO SCHOOL BLUES
No Back to School for Too Many Kids
It’s not as simple as A-B-C, but help has arrived!
The back-to-school shuffle can be seen across the land in big box stores, school offices, and doctors’ exam rooms. Not so much in family homeless shelters, campgrounds, cheap motels, and other non-traditional places where millions of kids and parents try to survive.
When families lose their place to live (aka enter homelessness), they often flail around trying to find a safe place for the kids to be. The common double-whammy — they often lose their schools, unnecessarily.
Often their first stop on the homelessness express leads to doubling up (or worse) with family, friends, or acquaintances. They try to make light of their plight. “Just having hard times” is a common descriptor I’ve heard countless times. School may not fit in at all or be an afterthought for many of these students and their families.
Even though a strong federal law (McKinney-Vento) removes barriers common to homeless students, too many kids don’t get into school. Common reasons include:
- Ignorance of the law (families and schools) that allows students to stay in the same school or gets them right into the school where they’re now staying, without red tape
- Shame and fear — shame that the family is in the predicament they’re in, and fear that if the child welfare authorities find out, the kids will be tossed into the system
- Logistics — not having a way to get to/from school, not having school supplies and uniforms, not knowing that they can (theoretically) easily register and they don’t need money and a bunch of documents
- All of the above and so much more . . .
Attendance can also be vexing
High mobility and housing instability means families don’t know where they’ll stay from one night to the next, making it almost impossible for school transportation to be arranged. Older kids may have to take care of younger ones while parents work or search for housing. Common illnesses and lack of medical care knock many kids out of the classroom.
The kids get in trouble and miss out on education. The parents get blamed and shamed.
But wait! Whose fault is it really?
The (mostly) moms trying to keep things together in daunting circumstances? Nope. The kids, wracked with anxiety about their loss of housing, friends, pets, and the circumstances that led up to this? Nope.
Typically, it’s beleaguered school staff who too often don’t know the law, or they’re too harried to recognize the signs of homelessness, much less spend time to connect the student with the district’s homeless liaison. School personnel, already overtaxed, don’t have the wherewithal to properly apply McKinney-Vento. Administrators worry about balancing the budget and see homeless students as expensive. So these kids fall between the cracks.
I can also say some schools/districts do right by kids experiencing homelessness. And it works wonders!
Leave It to the Moms!
As one of the people who pushed to get the McKinney-Vento Act passed, and the Illinois Education for Homeless Children Act before that, I’ve got skin in the game when it comes to making sure kids get into school in spite of their homelessness. That could explain why I’m so psyched about our new project, 3Melissas.
The Three Melissas — The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness is a book I just wrote with my friend/colleague Diana Bowman. We relied on three Melissas, moms I met in my 20 years on the road under my HEAR US Inc. banner.
I first interviewed each of these amazing women during their period of homelessness. Back then they enthusiastically agreed to be interviewed for films I was making to help viewers better understand family homelessness. Since that initial meeting, we’ve kept in touch. Last year when I asked, they jumped at the opportunity to do this unconventional book!
The basic premise of the book is to give parents a heads-up on what it’s like to be in a homeless situation. The savvy Melissas came up with a boatload of pointers and cautions. We included their suggestions on how both families and hosts can better navigate the most common form of family homelessness — doubling up.
The book is designed to be given to parents through schools and shelters who buy them for a nominal cost. Each Melissa will benefit from the proceeds. Diana and I will not profit, except for the satisfaction of how this scathingly brilliant project will have a massive impact.
The book reviews validate our belief that the 3Melissas book has benefits far and wide — for homeless families, those who work with them, college students planning to work with struggling families, elected officials who actually want to know more about homelessness, and the general public who wonder what families really go through.
I’ve never given birth to a baby. But this process has got to be similar! Now to raise it right!
For more stories about women, families and homelessness, follow Fourth Wave. Have you got a story or poem that focuses on women or other disempowered groups? Submit to the Wave!
