Up & Coming Weekly

6 UCW OCTOBER 7-13, 2009 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM MARGARET DICKSON, State Representative and Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or call 919-733-5776 or email MARGARETD@NCLEG.NET All across our country, school systems, students, and parents are settling into school year routines. I see the buses on my morning walk with Lilly the Lab, and I hear conversations about the best principals and teachers and who has too much or too little homework. High school football rivalries are underway, and bands are practicing for the big games. Kindergarteners are largely over their jitters, and high school senior have the jitters as they work on their college applications. All in all, it has begun as a pretty normal school year for most people. Not for homeless students, though. For homeless students, there is no routine. Life is chaotic—different, unpredictable and generally negative every day. The do not know what to expect or what to count on — a reality of life that makes school less a priority than simply making it through the day. The New York Times took a recent look at the plight of children of homeless families, focusing on Asheville in Buncombe County, a city and a county school smaller than Fayetteville and Cumberland. There is no reason, though, to believe that the situation is any different here. It may, in fact, be more acute. Homelessness among students appears to be rising everywhere, driven by relentless and devastating job losses and the foreclosures which follow or just come on their own. There are all kinds of reasons for unemployment and home losses, of course, and plenty of places to lay the blame, but homeless children did not cause their situations, nor can they do much to reverse them. Here are some numbers. While current data is not available and what is available is a moving target as people relocate both within communities and from area to area and state to state, the Times reports that the number of homeless children has risen dramatically. The Policy Director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth estimates that the number of homeless children has risen by 75 to 100 percent over the last two years as the Great Recession overtook us. Stunningly, there are now more than a million homeless children in our country. Cumberland County is right there with the rest of the nation. The Cumberland County School System told me that in school year 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available, there were 555 homeless children in our schools. This is more than double the relatively modest 230 homeless students during school year 2004-05. Remember, these are just the children school officials know about. The numbers do not count homeless families that are still flying under the radar by giving out an address that is not theirs and then sleeping in a car, a camper, a motel room or literally on the streets. My guess is that when the numbers come in for the current school year, they will be higher still. So what is it like to be a homeless child trying to go to school? The Times reports on several Asheville area children. Charity, 9, and her 6-year-old brother, Elijah, struggled in school last year, bringing home Cs, and their family now faces eviction from their $475 a month rental trailer. Says Charity about her school experience last year, "I couldn't go to sleep, I was worried about all the stuff." Cody, 14, and his 11-year-old brother, Zack, live in an RV campground with their mother who had to move the family from a trailer to a camper when her job as a sales clerk was cut to two days a week. School personnel bring school supplies to their campground. Another boy, 12, and his mother live in a women's shelter after she was laid off and they could not afford their apartment rent. This child rides almost two hours each way on the bus back to his old school so that he can continue in chorus. The bus arrives at 6:05 a.m. Federal law requires that homeless children get some special attention and that they be allowed to attend the school they were in before they became homeless. This, of course, creates real challenges for school systems in large geographical areas, like Cumberland County, but it is both the law and the right thing to do. Being a homeless child through no fault of one's own is still hard. Says the chief executive of an Asheville charity that helps families in need with food and money, "It's hard enough going to school and growing up, but these kids also have to worry where they'll be staying that night and whether they'll eat….We see 8-year-olds telling Mom not to worry, don't cry." You and I cannot fix the complicated issues which land families in homelessness. What we can do is know and notice that their children are in school side by side with our children, be kind and help generously whenever we can. Please, Don't Cry, Mama by MARGARET DICKSON THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET ;7+1)4 ;-+=:1

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