While the technical definition of student homelessness differs from that of the normal population, experts say the impacts are no different. And according to a recent study, the number of students is increasing.
A January 2020 report from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s National Center for Homeless Education showed that the number of students experiencing homelessness at some point during the previous three years rose 15 percent. During that time, from the 2015-16 school year to 2017-18, North Carolina saw a 9.6 percent increase.
In Chatham County, around 700 students are classified as homeless, or without permanent residence. Rosemarie Rovito, Chatham County Schools’ McKinney-Vento liaison, says districts normally hover around 10 percent of their student population. Chatham is around 8 percent, but, in her words, “the numbers are high.”
“So many of these people hide in the shadows,” Rovito said. “They don’t want you to know how they’re living.”
“McKinney-Vento” is shorthand for the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law passed in 1987 that was designed to provide federal funds for homeless shelter programs. It also outlined protections for student who, according to the Chatham County Schools’ website, “do not have a fixed, regular and adequate residence.” That could mean the children are indeed homeless or are living with family and friends, hotels and motels, shelters, cars, abandoned buildings or were even abandoned in a hospital.
Rovito said an issue she’s seen in Chatham in her 13 years in the district is a lack of affordable housing and how that can contribute to student homelessness.
“There isn’t affordable housing,” she said. “So we have a lot of homes that are not really kept up. Anywhere else, you really wouldn’t want to live in them, so we find people living in substandard housing. They’re not up to code, they haven’t been maintained.”
She added that teenagers are often the most vulnerable, whether they’re thrown out of homes or run away; one time, she said, the parents moved away and their teenage child didn’t know they had gone.
“Those are the ones that I find the hardest to help because it’s really scrambling,” Rovito said. “There have been teenagers that we’d had to have them come in and take showers in the school, do laundry in the school. Sometimes there’s no help out there. There’s not a lot for these teenagers.”
These students are often the ones who struggle the most academically. During the 2017-2018 school year, according to the UNCG report, “approximately 29 percent of students experiencing homelessness achieved academic proficiency in reading (language arts). During the same school year, 24 percent of the students achieved proficiency in mathematics, while 26 percent achieved proficiency in science.”
Rovito said students who are classified as homeless often have less stability at home, which means they’re less likely to succeed academically.
“I have kids that will move six times in one year,” she said. “Imagine having to put them in six different schools. You want them to be stable, you want them to know their teachers. This is probably the only stable place a lot of these kids, so we want to keep it as stable as possible.”
The district follows certain policies to help homeless students, including:
• Making “reasonable efforts” to identify homeless students and “eliminate barriers” to getting an education.
• Immediately enrolling homeless students “even if they do not have proof of residency, school and immunization records, birth certificates, or other document” or if they “are not accompanied by an adult.”
• Allowing students to remain in the school they attended at the beginning of the year if they lost permanent housing and had to move somewhere else.
The district is “constantly revisiting” how to support the families in homelessness, Rovito said, but Chatham lacks some needed resources that surrounding counties have.
“We don’t have a homeless shelter, we don’t have a domestic violence shelter,” she said. “Things that you normally just assume are around in a big city, they don’t exist. So I have to work with Sanford because they have homeless shelters and I have to work with Durham and Chapel Hill.”
However, she added, Chatham does have an advantage because the district’s social workers, teachers and other employees are trained to look for signs of homelessness and respond appropriately.
“We are lucky because we’re a small county,” Rovito said. “(We find them) very quickly so the kids are passing their grades. We don’t wait until the end of the year — we know immediately that they’re falling behind.”
Reporter Zachary Horner can be reached at zhorner@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @ZachHornerCNR.