Schools Struggle with Rising Tide of Homelessness

The mortgage crisis has increased the number of homeless families -- many from middle-class backgrounds

By Lawrence Hardy

The district’s mail came back unopened. That was the first sign.

When Karen Kunkel, homeless coordinator for Maryland’s Charles County Public Schools, contacted the family that had lived in a large, suburban home, she heard a story that is becoming increasingly familiar.
“She started to cry,” Kunkel says, recalling that first talk with the children’s mother. “She said, ‘We don’t live there anymore.’ Once that happens, you start to ask pertinent questions in a very gentle way.”

The answers, sadly, were not unique. The family’s dream home—once worth $600,000 in this Washington, D.C., exurb—dropped in value. Their adjustable rate mortgage ballooned. The mother lost her job. Her husband held on to his, but it didn’t bring in enough to cover their debts. The family lost the house. When Kunkel spoke with the mother, they were living on the other side of the county in a friend’s unfinished half-basement, too ashamed to tell anyone of their situation and worried, needlessly, that the children would have to change schools.

As the economy worsens and job losses mount, school officials are seeing more families like this, part of the changing face of homelessness. The “traditional” faces—chronically homeless single adults and families living well below the poverty line—are still there, to be sure, and their numbers are growing. But they are being joined by middle-class families that “never experienced homelessness, never expected to experience homelessness,” says William Cohee, the Maryland Department of Education’s homeless education coordinator.

Charles County is not poor. In fact, Forbes magazine listed it as the 20th richest county in America in 2008. That’s largely thanks to its proximity to the Washington metro area, a region that thrived during the boom years of the 1990s and has been insulated, to some extent, from the subsequent bust because of high levels of federal employment.

But not everyone is insulated. Since 2007, the number of homeless students in Charles County has grown more than 50 percent. “It’s certainly going to go over 400 for the year,” Student Services Director Keith G. Grier said in early April.

That’s about 1.5 percent of the district’s 26,700 students, which may not sound like a lot. However, it’s just slightly below the 2 percent of all children (school age and younger) who are homeless nationwide, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. The center’s recent report, America’s Youngest Outcasts, said 1.5 million children suffer from the well-documented effects of homelessness, including poorer mental and physical health than their peers, and an average high school graduation rate of just 25 percent.

In most cases, homeless students aren’t numerous enough to have a big impact on a district’s budget or day-to-day operations. But what districts do to help these vulnerable children can have a tremendous impact on the quality of their lives, their sense of stability and belonging, and their ultimate academic success or failure. In Charles County, for example, teachers and administrators try to go beyond the literal requirements of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, whether it’s buying clothes, book bags, and backpacks at a Wal-Mart or arranging makeup sessions and tutoring for students who have missed the first semester of school.

“The people here just do so much more,” Grier says. “We feel that’s the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law.”

Few options, many needs
When Grier moved to Maryland from Pennsylvania 43 years ago, he had a choice: He could either work in Charles County or the larger, suburban school district in Montgomery County. He chose Charles County because of its proximity to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay.

“When I first came here, there were three traffic lights,” he recalls.

Over the years, Charles County’s tobacco farms and commercial fisheries gave way to burgeoning middle- and upper-class suburbs. There are, of course, hundreds of stoplights now, and crowded multi-lane highways that put Charles County within commuting distance of Washington, Baltimore, and even Richmond, Va. County Development Director George Robertson says 55 percent “of our workers leave the county every morning” for jobs someplace else.

As it has grown, the county and its school district have diversified. In 2005-06, the district became “majority minority” for the first time. Today, 53 percent of students are African-American, 39 percent are white, and fewer than 5 percent are Hispanic or Native American.

The county is relatively affluent, and had prided itself on its “smart growth” policies. With minimum lot sizes of 2,600 square feet, Charles County is the place people look to when they want to “trade up” from smaller residences in neighboring Prince George’s County and surrounding areas, Robertson says.

And yet the county also has pockets of poverty—among longtime rural residents, some of whom lack running water, and along the bustling U.S. 301 corridor that passes through the cities of Waldorf and La Plata, lined with the occasional pawn shop or “checks cashed” storefront. About 25 percent of public school students receive free and reduced-price lunch, a 5 percent increase from 2005-06.

Options are few for families that become homeless. A shelter is open for single men, and a shelter serving about 30 women, some with children, is operated by Catholic Charities in a remote part of the county. The county puts a handful of people up in motels for brief periods. And from Nov. 1 to March 31, various churches take turns providing emergency shelters for single people and families in church lobbies and fellowship halls. Starting April 1, however, the homeless must largely fend for themselves, a fact that led local commissioners to establish the county’s first housing authority a few months ago to help.

Grier says those who are unexpectedly homeless due to job loss, foreclosure, or other events usually double or triple up with family or friends. It’s a change that can be especially wrenching for children.
“Kids come home from school, and everything that they own—from their teddy bears, to their toys, to their bedroom furniture—is out on the curb,” Grier says.

School a critical anchor
Charles County has 568 homeless households, a number that includes 622 children, according to the local United Way. For these families, school becomes a critical anchor to the community.

“That’s what they recognize, and they don’t want that to change,” says Kunkel, the district’s homeless coordinator. “The world outside may be changing, but that doesn’t have to change. When their world is this [school] building, that is what’s stable for them.”

When families are forced to move out of their homes, the district does its best to transport the children to their former school. That can mean coordinating bus service with other districts or linking to subsidized van services that visit Safe Nights, the seasonal program run by Charles County churches for the homeless. Sometimes the district provides gas money to parents when no other option is available.

Kunkel has several children riding buses to and from neighboring Prince George’s County, among them two 11th-grade sisters and their kindergarten-age brother, who often sleeps on one of their shoulders on the long bus ride home. “The trip is about an hour and 15 minutes in the afternoon, depending on the traffic,” Kunkel says.

Children who aren’t already part of the free and reduced-price lunch program are immediately enrolled. Kunkel buys clothes and school supplies for many of them—sneakers and book bags at Wal-Mart, the Sports Authority, or other “big box” stores where she can find a good deal. Sometimes she buys supplies for children in the 3-year-old program. At others, it’s classroom equipment for high school students.
“We buy everything from crib sheets to scientific calculators for AP classes,” Kunkel says.

Homeless children receive special attention from school counselors, visits from tutors (if they are in the women’s shelter), and home visits from pupil personnel workers. “We are seeing more [school] movement than normal,” says Guidance Services Supervisor Jeanette Kaufmann. “I’ve talked with counselors recently who are having students with four or five schools [in their past], and multiple schools in one year.”

It can be difficult for counselors to place students who come from another district at midyear, particularly if they are in high school, Kaufmann says. For example, she says, one student from another county was floundering after being placed in Algebra II. Should the student try to continue the class with added support or be moved to a lower level?

“We’re, in a way, demoting that child,” Kaufmann says, noting the decision was difficult for teachers and counselors. But, above all, she says staff members must be flexible and sensitive and respond to each child’s unique needs.

Some mid year transfers have the chance to catch up with what they missed so they will not fall further behind, Kaufmann says. This process may involve one-on-one sessions with teachers, which creates additional demands for everyone.

“To support these kids so they can become self-sufficient citizens and be treated fairly in the world,” says Grier, “we’ve got to give them some support.”

Getting to ‘next’
Adrian Barbour once employed six people for a business that provided consultants to metro Washington firms. When he lived in San Diego, a few years back, he belonged to civic clubs and was active in politics. Dressed smartly but casually in jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, he has a master’s degree and a pundit’s knowledge of political strategy. He’s smart and personable, talking at length about the challenges that faced Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries last year, and just where, in the campaign’s final months, John McCain went wrong.

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