Special Report: Homelessness a struggle for students
By Cole Short
The Forum - 03/09/2003
By night, they bunk on the floors of friends and family, curl up in cars or sleep in
temporary shelters. By day, they attend classes and roam the halls of schools in Moorhead,
blending in with kids who’ve never been without a place to call home. Since 1995,
about 125 Moorhead children and teens per year have been homeless during the school year.
The population reached a near-record 151 students Jan. 31, nearly four months before the
start of summer
vacation. The number itself can surprise, said Deb Pender, who oversees Moorhead Public
Schools’ homeless program. But the stories and struggles shared by these students
– a hidden and silent society – will amaze, she said.
“I don’t think the general public knows how vulnerable these kids are,”
Pender said.
She said that 70 percent of the homeless students were raised by local families.
Pender’s program aims to meet the academic and social needs of homeless youth.
Attendance rates and test scores in math, read! ing and writing for homeless students
consistently lag behind those of their peers in Moorhead. And adolescents without a place
to live face the daily challenge of trying to fit in, while trying to shake the feeling
they stick out.
“The toughest part about being homeless is not having someone to talk to about how
you feel,” said Maria Pinto,
10, who spent four months in a homeless shelter at the start of the school year. “You
feel scared to talk about it
with your classmates because you’re afraid they might laugh at you,” she said.
A quick look
Moorhead School District started a program to help homeless youth in 1995. Backed by
federal grants, the Homeless Children and Youth Project served 97 students its first year.
From 1995 through 2003, the project assisted 1,003 students living in shelters, in cars or
with family and friends. This year, the district will spend $53,650 to oversee its
homeless population.
About $43,650 of the financing comes from federa! l grants via the McKinney-Vento Act. An
additional $10,000
comes from federal Title I funds. About $6,500 is set aside to transport students to class
from shelters or transitional housing. Most of the money goes to staff – outreach and
social workers – who help students academically.
“We collaborate with a number of agencies,” Pender said. “There’s no
way we can meet all our students’ needs.”
Moorhead served 146 homeless students, 69 boys and 77 girls, in the 2001 school year. The
genders in the group seemed fairly balanced. However, the races and ethnicities of
students were not. An alarming number of Moorhead’s homeless kids were minorities,
Pender said.
Whites made up 86 percent of Moorhead’s 5,560 pupils in 2001. About 8 percent were
Hispanic, 3 percent American
Indian and 1 percent black. But the percentages change drastically with a quick look at
homeless students. Of 146 homeless youth attending Moorhead schools in 2001, 39 percent
were American Indian! , 23 percent white, 23 percent Hispanic and 9 percent black.
“The minorities we serve tend to be very mobile,” said Sally Dandurand, the
school district’s homeless liaison.
“We see a fair number of kids go back and forth from the Indian reservations.”
Linda Scheet, a school social worker, attributed the trend to families searching for
employment. “They’re trying to make a better life for themselves,” she
said. “Many of the kids we serve come from families who are the working poor.”
The district serves youth under age 5 to teens over age 18, Scheet said. More than half of
the 146 homeless
students – 86 in all – were between ages 10 and 17.
Making the grade
The family of Lisa Enderle, 13, a seventh-grader at Moorhead Junior High, became homeless
in the late 1990s after
leaving a “bad situation” in Richardton, N.D. Enderle, her sister and mother
relied on relatives for shelter, hopping from couch to couch each night. Enderle’s
mother, Stacey, said she had n! o references for an apartment rental, no credit history
and no job.
On the road, the family sometimes slept in their Ford Bronco. “It was quite the
hotel,” Lisa Enderle said. The transition didn’t affect the girl’s grades
or her homework. “It was summer, thank goodness,” she said. But Enderle, who now
lives in Sabin, Minn., understands how homelessness can cause a student’s grades to
slip.
“It can be a scary time for a family,” she said. “Instead of school,
students are worried about where their next meal
is going to come from.”
The district provides free breakfasts and lunches to all homeless youth, Pender said.
Still, the effect of homelessness on students reveals itself on state standardized tests.
In the 2001, 80 percent of Spuds eighth-graders passed Minnesota’s basic skills test
in reading. About 75 percent passed the math test, while 93 percent of sophomores passed
the writing test.
Homeless students didn’t fare so well. More than two-thirds of student! s – 28
of 40 – failed the math test, while 20
of 44 failed the reading test. Nine of 23 sophomores failed the writing test. About
three-quarters of homeless students in Minnesota test below their grade level in reading,
according to the Minneapolis Foundation. The same students are four times more likely than
their peers to have learning disabilities, the foundation said.
“When a homeless child moves from school to school, it creates gaps in their
knowledge,” said Mary Jo Schmid,
principal at Riverside Elementary School.
“They may have street savvy, but you’ll also find that they have holes in their
education,” she said.
Schmid’s school sits blocks away from Churches United for the Homeless. About 20
children from the shelter attend
Riverside each year. Initially, the school places students into grade levels based on
children’s ages. However, teachers keep a keen eye on homeless students to help them,
if necessary, Schmid said.
“We probably keep closer tabs o! n them,” she said. “A teacher never says,
‘I’m going to help this child because
he’s homeless,’ but they can say ‘I’m going to help because help is
needed.’
“If a child in fourth grade doesn’t know his alphabet, that sends up a red flag
to us right away,” Schmid said.
Trying to fit in
No child feels comfortable talking about being homeless, Pinto said. The fourth-grader
spent more than four months from September until January living at Churches United with
her mother and sister. The family initially stayed at a friend’s apartment after
relocating to Moorhead from New Mexico. But Pinto said her mother, who had polio as a
child and uses a wheelchair, couldn’t climb the stairs at the apartment, so they
turned to Churches United. Described as bright and articulate by teachers, Pinto never
discussed being homeless with classmates.
“I told them I moved, which is true,” she said. “I don’t think anyone
wants to talk about not having a home.”
Sarah Jones, 17, an! d her sister, Angie, 21, understand Pinto’s hesitancy. The girls
found themselves homeless for six to eight months after their mother left an abusive
relationship. They stayed at Churches United for months as their mother battled
alcoholism. Both girls attended classes part time when they could. They left mainstream
classes to enroll in the Red River Area
Learning Center, the district’s alternative school.
“I went to regular school, but the kids teased me,” said Sarah Jones. “I
told my mom I didn’t want to be around
people who would do that.”
Angie Jones graduated in 2002 and her sister plans to finish school this spring. The
girls’ story isn’t uncommon in Moorhead. Many homeless youth share similar
stories of physical and chemical abuse in their families, officials say. The Wilder
Research Center in St. Paul interviewed 200 homeless men, women and children Oct. 26,
2000, in
Fargo-Moorhead.
Among the findings:
- Roughly 14 percent of parents in Moorhead sai! d their children skipped meals in the
past month because they
could not afford food.
- About 57 percent said they had been unable to obtain dental care for children.
- Twenty-nine percent of parents reported at least one child with a learning or
school-related problem.
Scheet helped conduct the interviews in 2000. The types of factors discovered in the
survey reveal a few reasons
why students who are homeless feel alienated from their peers, she said.
But there are others.
“We interviewed 10 kids at the time and asked the girls if they had been offered
money for sexual acts,” Scheet
said.
“All of them said ‘Yes.’”
Making a difference
Despite the obstacles homeless children face, Pender said she believes the district makes
a difference in kids’ lives. Scheet said homeless advocates have a two-day rule to
get kids to class once officials discover they’re homeless. The district offers
students free transportation to school if they move outside their atten! dance area, even
to Fargo. Through partnerships with other agencies, students who have children of their
own are offered free day care. And the district has started a partnership with Minnesota
State University Moorhead to provide accelerated courses to students who need help with
basic skills.
“We try to break down the barriers that can prevent kids from succeeding,”
Scheet said.
Schmid said teachers have to do their part to make kids feel welcome, too.
“We try to be warm and make sure they don’t stick out,” she said. “And
if they leave us, we make a big effort to say
‘We’ll miss you.’”
Sarah Jones said that sort of effort made the difference in her staying in school after
her stint with homelessness.
“People at Red River (Area Learning Center) would do almost anything to get you to
school,” she said.
“If you’re homeless, they make sure you’re safe and get you back on your
feet.”
Enderle and Pinto point out homeless children, too often, feel like they’re a! lone.
Kindness from friends and strangers can determine how a child copes with being homeless in
school, they say.
“Not having a home can be painful,” Enderle said. “When you get the
slightest piece of charity, it means the world
to you.”
Readers can reach Forum reporter Cole Short at (701) 241-5557