redditing_1L t1_itvbmpu wrote on October 26, 2022 at 4:01 PM

Reply to comment by redditing_1L in More Than 104,000 New York City Students Were Homeless Last Year by Lilyo

Many students living in temporary housing struggled with staggering educational challenges during the pandemic, as they often could no longer rely on school buildings for crucial services like counseling. Some attended classes remotely from shelters that lacked reliable internet access.

More than six in 10 homeless children living in shelters were defined as “chronically absent” last year, which means they missed at least 10 percent of school days, more than double the rate of their peers in permanent housing. Even during more normal times, homeless students often face disruption, sometimes commuting long distances to their schools and transferring to new ones as they bounce between living situations, even though a federal law gives them the right to remain in the same school when they move.

The regular upheaval hurts their academic performance: Only 60 percent of homeless high school students living in shelters graduate in four years. Their high school drop out rate is three times higher than that of students in stable housing.

New York City schools could soon receive a boost in funding for each student they enroll who lives in temporary housing, after a city task force signaled it might propose changing the formula for distributing funds to city schools. The current formula attaches extra money to several groups, including students with disabilities and those learning English as a new language, but it is “missing some special populations,” said Sheree Gibson, a member of the task force, at a recent public meeting in Queens.

The task force will make its recommendations to the schools chancellor, David C. Banks, this month, and the decision about whether to change the formula lies with him. It is unclear if changes will become effective before funding for the next school year is calculated.

Mr. Banks has already agreed to hire 100 staff members to work in shelters this year and to help families get their children to school more often. Still, several top staff roles in the office of the city’s Education Department that oversees students in temporary housing are vacant, including the executive director who exited recently.

Suzan Sumer, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement that no work to support students with unique needs “will be disrupted while we navigate a period of transition.” Officials have already started the hiring process for the new shelter-based jobs, Ms. Sumer said, and expect to begin on-boarding new staff members soon.

The highest rate of student homelessness is in the southwest Bronx, where more than one in 5 students lived in temporary housing at some point last school year.

redditing_1L t1_itvboa2 wrote on October 26, 2022 at 4:01 PM

But Queens saw the greatest uptick in the number of homeless students, with a rise of more than 12 percent, the data shows. In District 24, which includes the Corona and Elmhurst neighborhoods, an area that became an early epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic and that is receiving many of the new migrants, the number rose by nearly 22 percent.

The more than 6,000 new homeless students, of which at least 5,500 are recently arrived migrant children living in shelters, have brought fresh challenges to the system. With many learning English as a new language, some schools have struggled to find enough bilingual teachers and social workers to meet their needs. School officials have said that they are working to add more of those staff members, and create new programs for English-language learners.

Nicole Cisuentes is among the new arrivals. A third-grader whose family arrived in the country from Colombia last month, Nicole has enrolled at the Helen M. Marshall School in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, where more than 40 percent of students were English-language learners last year.

But her mother, Julieth Murillo, was eager for her to learn English, so Nicole initially joined a classroom where only English was spoken.

Ms. Murillo said the adjustment was rocky. “She came home with nothing in her notebooks,” she said, and was not always welcomed by other students. About two weeks ago, Ms. Murillo moved Nicole into a dual language class taught in both Spanish and English.

“Now she’s really happy,” Ms. Murillo said in Spanish. “Everything is going really well, thankfully.”