Thursday, September 23, 1999
School a struggle for homeless
Children underserved, report says
BY SUSAN VELA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — Homeless children in Kentucky may get enrolled in schools, but too often they aren't getting equal access to a quality education, contrary to federal law, said a new report issued by the Children's Law Center.
“No Place to Call School: A Report of Kentucky's Homeless Children” is being sent to school districts throughout Kentucky to raise awareness about the special needs of homeless children and how they are not being met, said Kim Brooks, executive director of the Children's Law Center.
She is hoping that the public school system will adopt some of the report's recommendations, which include more collaboration between schools and homeless shelters and greater parental and state education department involve ment.
“The results were not very positive,” Ms. Brooks said of the 15-page report. “The quality of education being provided is very questionable.”
The report sprang from a larger initiative by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. It was centered around the federal McKinney Act, which requires equal access for homeless children to educational services.
The Kentucky findings were based on surveys and interviews involving school districts, state education officials and emergency shelters from across the state.
Ms. Brooks said that one of the biggest problems is that homeless children are so transient yet, like other students, need stability. She said districts need to accommodate their situation by doing what they can to make sure homeless children remain at the same school if they move.
That would allow schools to better gauge students' needs and perhaps identify them for special education, remediation and gifted and talented programs, she said.
The report also noted that schools are not always providing free lunches to homeless children and that transportation issues and immunization, residency and school record requirements often are a hindrance to getting homeless children enrolled at the school that is in their best interest to attend.
Covington Superintendent James Kemp agreed that providing a stable routine for students is important and can make a difference in test scores.
This year, he noted, the inner-city school district has a new procedure. It establishes that students enrolled in one school will continue to be transported to that school if they move within the district.
He also noted that each of the elementary schools has a family resource center and each of the secondary schools has a youth services center, which are geared toward identifying homeless children and providing the services they may need.
“We take homelessness and student transiency seriously,” Dr. Kemp said, saying that a small percentage of the district's students are homeless.
“It's just a couple of percent, (but) that should give everyone pause that perhaps we need to do something,” he said.
Linda Young, director of Welcome House in Covington, noted that getting a quality education is especially important to homeless children, who sometimes hail from generations of poverty.
But “the more you move around, ... the more you feel alienated,” she said. “When you're so vulnerable, it's very hard to get out of that. Really, it's the poverty issue.”
Welcome House has an advocate who works with school children, helps them get enrolled and receive any kind of extra tutoring or services they may need.
The new report indicates that there were 7,270 homeless children in Kentucky in 1997. Jefferson County had the highest reported population of 2,088. Kenton County followed with 568 and Fayette County with 375. Other counties ranged between 0 and 277.
Ms. Brooks estimated that there are more. She also stressed that the goal of the report was to take a statewide look at the issue instead of focusing solely on Northern Kentucky.
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