Thursday, December 25, 2008

Utah Students Displaced with our amid enonomic and family turbulence

Catching a good night's sleep in the Midvale Community Center, which serves as the overflow shelter for Salt Lake City's Road Home, isn't easy.

People get up in the night to use the bathroom. Infants cry. People talk, argue, or even fight. But if getting a little shut-eye is hard, so is studying for a test, or finishing your math homework.

"I sit on my bed and just focus on it. I don't think about anything else that's going on around me," said Annette Palma, a 12-year-old fifth-grader at Midvale Middle School.

After job prospects in Portland, Ore., disappeared, Palma's parents headed to Texas with her four siblings when the family car broke down in Salt Lake City. Living in a homeless shelter is no excuse to skip
school, however. With the help of Connie Crosby, liaison for homeless students in the Jordan School District, Annette's mother Margarita wasted no time in getting her school-age children enrolled.

The transition has been hard. No more so than for Margarita's 11-year-old son Randy, who's fended off bullies at Midvale Elementary School.

"When I show teachers my children's transcripts they're amazed how well they've done," Palma said. "It's hard to seem them struggle. Of course I don't want to see them get hurt or laughed at."

Neither does Crosby, who checks the Midvale overflow shelter at 7 a.m. every weekday during late fall and winter months to see how many new children have arrived so she can enroll them, hopefully in the last school they attended. "We've definitely had an increase in students at the shelter," Crosby said.

While numbers for the 2008-09 school year won't be in until next year, social service liaisons at many Utah public school districts say they have already noticed an increase in the number of displaced students over the same time last year. The federal McKinney-Vento Act requires states to ensure that students are enrolled and can earn academic credit during times of displacement. So the liaisons do all they can to help students who find themselves uprooted, or in living situations beyond their control.

The greatest number find themselves "doubled up" with relatives outside their primary family. The second largest group of displaced students, such as the Palma children, are housed in shelters. Still others live in a parent's car parked in the school parking lot, or suddenly find themselves in the care of a grandparent or non-relative guardian after a parent has succumbed to drugs or mental illness.

Local charities do their part, donating clothes and some school supplies, but local school district liaisons do the heavy lifting. Students and families must be counseled, and transcripts and immunization records must move to the student's new school if it becomes impractical for them to attend their old school, a preferred option under the McKinney-Vento Act.

During the 2007-08 school year, Granite School District counseled 899 displaced students. This October alone the district has identified 768 displaced students, with the remainder of the school year to go. "We're at a very high number for the beginning of the year," Jacobson said.

With 1,235 displaced students counseled or served last school year, the Salt Lake City School District reports identifying more than 800 displaced students so far this school year.

The workload can become overwhelming. "Today I'll take two kids to get eyeglasses, help one teenager get food stamps, and make sure a bunch of kids get clothes," said Mike Harmon, counselor and education liaison for the Salt Lake City School District. "That's all before lunch, hopefully, if all goes well."

Harmon recalls helping a teenager reduced to living in a shed because it was the only place she could keep her German Shepherd, the only family she had left. Jacobson once got a report of a student living under the bleachers of a high school football field. As vulnerable as they are, Jacobson is often amazed at students' resilience.

"One 10-year-old girl was able to give us the clothing sizes for all her siblings," Jacobson said. "Sometimes you're dumbfounded that they know things they shouldn't need to know."

Harmon, who has 10 years of counseling experience for his district, and three additional years of counseling displaced students, said he sees an increasing number of students working in order to maintain their family's housing situation. Causes of displacement are not as important as helping those displaced, but Harmon hears the details of some cases. More students have been displaced due to doubling rents, he said. And he knows that some families have gone through a foreclosure, even if they choose not to fill out a McKinney-Vento form for aid. While the law requires that displaced students receive a measure of help once identified, applying for that help is strictly voluntary.

"We know there are some folks who've been foreclosed on who choose not to fill out the form," Harmon said.

Crosy said the Palma children are unusual for having switched schools only once. "There's children here already this year that have been in five different schools," she said.

Annette said she has no time for anyone who might look down on her or her family for using a temporary shelter. "It doesn't really matter what they think," she said. "I love my homework. It gives me something to do."

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