I remember as a kid beginning my educational path convinced that my teachers lived at school. It never occurred to me that they, like us students, might have homes and lives. They did not huddle around and eat the leftover snacks, or sleep nightly on nap-time cushions. While easy to see the fault in my childhood conception of my teachers lives, it took me longer to understand my second incorrect assumption – that all students return to a “home” at the end of the day.
Last month on October 15th, 2018, The New York Times reported that homelessness within New York public schools had reached an all-time high: identifying 114,659 homeless students across the state. The New York Amsterdam Times reported on October 29th, 2018 that that number was more like 152,839 students – citing the New York State Education Department’s Student Information Repository System for the 2017-2018 academic year. This represents a 66% increase in identified homeless students since the 2010-2011 academic year. City Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks was quoted in New York Daily News on November 12, 2018 as stating this increase was due to the city’s loss of 150,000 units of affordable housing, in addition to rents spiking by 18% while incomes rose a mere 5%.
These figures are compelling, but what they don’t address is the many different ways people picture homelessness. As Kavina Berry, who used to be a homeless student shared with KSFY:
“It’s really hard to put into perspective for people who haven’t gone through it. I did have a bed, I had a roof over my head, I had the security of not having to really be living on the streets, but I wasn’t in a home. I was just in a building basically.”
What Kavina is getting at is that homelessness, and student homelessness in particular, can take many forms. More often than not, students who find themselves without homes end up either living in shelters or “doubling-up” with extended family or friends temporarily and occasionally very short term.
This instability has multiple effects on a students well being, performance, and emotional state. Homeless students are more likely to miss class and perform much worse on state exams:
“In the 2015-16 school year, just 12 percent of students living in shelters passed the state math exam, and 15 percent passed English.”. The New York Times, 2018.
In addition, As Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza stated to New York Daily News:
“students feel very embarrassed about the fact that they’re sleeping on somebody’s couch or somebody’s floor — or that they’re in a shelter”
To this writer, often overlooked in such discourses is the palpable way homeless students can end up existing as social strangers. They hide the realities of their lives from their peers and struggle to forge their own sense of identity that comes with having a space of your own. They must either deny their own struggle, or out themselves as being different – becoming “homeless” publicly, a term that so often coincides with shame.
As I mentioned in a previous post on school shootings, it can be easy to mischaracterize “educational emergencies” as happening in countries other than the U.S. The danger is that such conceptions can obscure and delegitimize those struggling closest to us. To this writer, homeless students exist in a state not unlike refugees (a frequent topic across this blog: refugee tag). Precarious and constantly mobile within a land that is supposedly their own, homeless students are faced with a cognitive dissonance strong enough to rattle your skull. They need not also be invisible.
By: Carlos
References:
Barker, C. (Oct 29th, 2018). One in 10 NYC Public School Students Are Homeless. Amsterdam News. Retrieved from http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2018/oct/29/no-child-should-be-homeless-nyc-1-10-public-school/
Chapman, B. (Nov 12th, 2018).NYC taking fresh approaches to help record number of homeless kids do better in school. New York Daily News. Retrieved from http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/ny-metro-city-officials-tackle-homeless-students-crisis-20181108-story.html
Feldmann, M. (Nov 11th, 2018). Number of Homeless in Sioux Falls on Rise. KSFY. Retrieved from https://www.ksfy.com/content/news/Number-of-young-homeless-students-in-Sioux-Falls-on-the-rise-500241452.html
Shapiro, E. (Oct 15th, 2018). Homelessness in New York Public Schools Is at a Record High: 114,659. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/nyregion/homeless-students-nyc-schools-record.html
Learning for Tomorrow : Education in Emergencies 
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