[Marxism] 679,000 homeless students

[J Rothermel]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/education/06homeless.html?_r=1

excerpt:

"There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that 
surpassed one million by last spring, "

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — In the small trailer her family rented over the 
summer, 9-year-old Charity Crowell picked out the green and purple 
outfit she would wear on the first day of school. She vowed to try 
harder and bring her grades back up from the C’s she got last spring — a 
dismal semester when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family 
was evicted and migrated through friends’ houses and a motel.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/education/06homeless.html?_r=1#secondParagraph> 


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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Katrina Crowell and her children, Charity Crowell and Elijah Carrington, 
who were homeless for part of the last school year. More Photos > 
<http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/09/06/education/0906HOMELESS_index.html> 


Charity is one child in a national surge of homeless schoolchildren that 
is driven by relentless unemployment and foreclosures. The rise, to more 
than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has 
tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their 
responsibilities — and the federal mandate — to salvage education for 
children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil.

The instability can be ruinous to schooling, educators say, adding 
multiple moves and lost class time to the inherent distress of 
homelessness. And so in accord with federal law, the Buncombe County 
district <http://www.buncombe.k12.nc.us/>, where Charity attends, 
provides special bus service to shelters, motels, doubled-up houses, 
trailer parks and RV campgrounds to help children stay in their familiar 
schools as the families move about.

Still, Charity said of her last semester, “I couldn’t go to sleep, I was 
worried about all the stuff,” and she often nodded off in class.

Charity and her brother, Elijah Carrington, 6, were among 239 children 
from homeless families in her district as of last June, an increase of 
80 percent over the year before, with indications this semester that as 
many or more will be enrolled in the months ahead.

While current national data are not available, the number of 
schoolchildren in homeless families appears to have risen by 75 percent 
to 100 percent in many districts over the last two years, according to 
Barbara Duffield, policy director of the National Association for the 
Education of Homeless Children and Youth <http://www.naehcy.org/>, an 
advocacy group.

There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that 
surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.