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| Separate
Lives |
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| Do
homeless-only schools keep students back? |
| by
Adam Holdorf |
The
grade-schooler on the TV sits on a jungle-gym
looking directly at the camera. "Respect and
dignity" is what he gets at his school, he
tells the audience in a 1995 episode of NBC's
Today Show. "At other schools, they'll taunt
you and tease you for not having a home. First
Place gives respect and dignity."
What the boy calls a haven, the federal government
calls segregation. Under strengthened McKinney
grant guidelines to be implemented next year,
the Department of Housing and Urban Development
cannot provide money to public school districts
for homeless-only schools. First Place will
not qualify for the McKinney money it's been
receiving from Seattle Public Schools.
The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH)
and the National Law Center on Homelessness
and Poverty (NLCHP) echo the government's
policy, saying schools such as First Place
pry homeless kids from the stability of their
old schools, shunt them off into a substandard
learning environment, and work to reinforce
prejudice against the homeless. Public officials
and social service providers "may come to
regard the separate school as the appropriate
place for homeless children to be educated,
overlooking their right to attend public schools
like all other children," says NLCHP.
"School is one part of [a homeless child's]
life that can stay the same. They can't control
their parents' alcoholism, they can't control
where they're staying," says Linda O'Neel,
who helps run a program for homeless kids
in the Vancouver Public Schools. "It's unbelievable
that school districts want to pull them out
of their communities."
Supporters of privately run homeless-only
schools say they not only offer kids respite
from their peers' prejudice, but work on problems
caused by family abuse or neglect.
Those goals elicit deep support. Nearly three-quarters
of First Place's total revenue comes from
private contributions and foundation grants.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave
$1 million to the school earlier this year.
That's more than twice the amount of McKinney
funding made available to all the public schools
in the entire state.
Like others, the First Place school began
at a time when residency requirements for
public school districts effectively barred
homeless students from an education. Since
1990, First Place's first full year of operation,
NLCHP estimates that the number of homeless
children in the U.S. attending school has
risen from 10 percent to 50 percent.
Now that public schools have their own programs,
NCH and NLCHP argue that facilities like First
Place should shut down the classrooms and
offer referral, counseling, and other support
to homeless public school students.
Over the years, homeless-only schools have
gained a certain institutional momentum, making
people unwilling to examine them. "Full-fledged
programs with lots of resources can protect
kids from ridicule, but they're still separate,"
says Barbara Duffield, of NCH.
This summer, the U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Education held a hearing at the
Thomas J. Pappas Elementary School, set up
after social workers could find no place in
the public schools for children staying at
their shelters. Starting only three years
ago, the school now buses in 1,000 students
from all over Maricopa County. At the hearing,
county school superintendent Sandra E. Dowling
said "the Pappas Program does not recognize
the value of mainstreaming children for the
sake of political correctness.... [It] forces
social engineering within our public schools."
In light of that argument, "change the word
'homeless' to 'black,'" says Duffield. When
educators shield homeless kids from their
peers, "all it means is we're accommodating
prejudice."
The children in the classrooms at First Place
don't stay long before moving on to public
schools, according to Doreen Cato, executive
director of First Place. Most are enrolled
there for about four months. A second-grader
with a spotty educational history presents
a real challenge to a teacher, she says; when
the children leave First Place, they should
at least have been assessed for their current
abilities. First Place has begun to package
standardized test results into a report for
the child's next teachers. Such an environment
of "assessment" or "transitioning" doesn't
sit well with advocates of public school programs.
"First Place sounds really good, but it's
not a real school. It doesn't offer a chance
to learn. It's like, 'Come on Johnny, get
it together here, and we'll have fun along
the way,'" says O'Neel. In 1996, O'Neel oversaw
the integration of the Vancouver School District.
The district closed a one-room schoolhouse
for elementary school kids staying in shelters,
boosted meals, clothing, and school supplies
programs, and resolved to keep kids enrolled
wherever they were before homelessness interrupted
their lives.
Separate school or no separate school, Cato
says, "the bottom line should be, are these
children getting a good education? Are they
getting the skills they need to succeed down
the road?"
When kids go back to the regular schools,
"we must share what we do. It's like 'tag,
you're it, now continue,'" she says. "We can
share our methods for caring for these kids."
The Seattle School District may not be up
to the challenge. This year, for the first
time since the federal program's inception,
the Seattle Public Schools were denied their
Mc-Kinney funding request for the 2000-2001
school year. That's a $70,000 funding hit.
According to state Department of Public Instruction
staff, the school district simply turned in
a sloppy grant application.
Most of the money paid for three full-time
case managers for homeless kids at six designated
public schools, many clustered in the Central
Area. The McKinney money paid for one-third
of the program, according to David Okimoto,
executive director of the Atlantic Street
Center, which runs the program. He plans to
tap into the state's Medicaid fund for needy
children to pay for the program - something
Atlantic Street has never tried before.
The school district continues to provide First
Place with more than $100,000 in federal assistance,
mostly to bus students to and from wherever
they're staying. The public schools also pay
for breakfast and lunch. In 1999, the school
district provided 18 percent of First Place's
total revenue. Cato says without McKinney
money, that proportion will undoubtedly drop.
First Place students are also never far from
their old classrooms: nearly a quarter of
them last attended a Seattle public school.
If these kids had a stable school within the
city before becoming homeless, Duffield argues,
why not keep them there? From free meals to
counseling, separate schools offer nothing
that mainstream schools don't, or can't, provide.
She puts the argument in the context of the
Supreme Court's ruling desegregating public
schools across the south. "Brown v. Board
of Education didn't rule that separate schools
were unequal because they had substandard
facilities; it ruled that these schools were
inherently unequal, because children
in minority groups lacked the opportunity
to interact with the children of the majority."
Cato, Duffield and other educators and advocates
will begin a statewide dialogue about education
for homeless children in a special meeting
Olympia on October 26th. |
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