A recent editorial ("Truancy and the Courts" May 1) offered valuable insight into the question of how schools should respond to chronic absence and truancy among their students. Instead of relying on punitive measures, the editorial explained, schools should "work with parents" and students to identify and address barriers to attendance.
We write to highlight a particular barrier to attendance that impacts many students in Baltimore City and elsewhere: homelessness. During fiscal year 2010, the Mayor's Office of Human Services identified more than 4,500 school-age children as homeless. Many of these children come from families who have lost their housing as a result of eviction or domestic violence. Others, typically older youth, have been kicked out of their homes or have chosen to leave following personal or family crises. Without a stable place to live, these young people often find themselves transitioning between shelters, friends' homes and other temporary locations.
Maintaining consistent participation in school is a challenge for many homeless children and youth. This poor attendance results from a variety of factors: High mobility resulting in frequent school transfers. Lack of transportation to and from school. Lack of records, which causes delays in enrollment. Lack of school uniforms or dress-code compliant clothing, compounded by poor access to laundry facilities. Poor health. Stigma and prejudice against individuals and families experiencing homelessness
Public schools are legally required under the McKinney-Vento Act to ensure that homelessness does not stand in the way of student attendance and achievement by enrolling homeless students even if they lack the requisite paperwork, permitting homeless students to remain in a single school and receive transportation to that school even as they move from place to place, and providing homeless students with supplies, uniforms, tutoring and other support.
The Baltimore school system began to focus concentrated attention on this problem during the fall of 2010 when it convened a Student School Stability Work Group, a coalition of community organizations and government agencies, to develop strategies for improving its identification of and services to children and youth experiencing homelessness. Already, the school system's attention to the issue has yielded positive developments: during the current school year, it has identified and served about 300 more homeless students than it did last year.
Moving forward, one of the work group's key recommendations is that, when confronting a chronically absent or truant student, attendance monitors, truancy officers, principals, teachers, student support teams and other school district staff should always inquire into the student's living situation. If the student reveals that he or she is staying with a friend, relocating frequently, does not have somewhere to keep a uniform or school supplies, or missed the bus because he or she is living in an unfamiliar location, staff should recognize that the student may be homeless, and arrange for the student to receive the necessary and legally-mandated supports so that he or she can stay in school.
The bottom line? City schools, and Baltimore City as a whole, can comprehensively address its student attendance problem only if it continues to deliberately and sincerely address its student homelessness problem.
Monisha Cherayil and Rhonda Lipkin, Baltimore
The writers are attorneys with the Public Justice Center.