More than 150 children in the Columbus Municipal School District do not know the comfort of sleeping in the same bed every night or the other comforts of home so many take for granted. In the 2012-2013 school year, 154 children were classified as homeless in the district.
In the state of Mississippi, more than 12,500 students will experience homelessness, according to the Mississippi Campaign to End Child Homelessness.
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education released data that claimed more than a million students were homeless nationwide.
Josie Fannon, director of Community Resource Connection, said the demand for shelter is greater than Columbus can supply.
“The need for emergency homeless solutions far exceeds the community’s ability to put resources there,” Fannon said.
Due to federal regulations, Fannon classifies the homeless differently than the school district. In order for someone to receive assistance from the Community Resource Connection, they must be living somewhere that is unfit for human beings, such as living out of their car or in an abandoned building or park.
In the Columbus school district, director of federal programs Anthony Brown said homeless students are classified as those students who do not live with a biological parent or do not have a stable address.
“We use the federal definition for schools,” Brown said. “If my granddaughter was sent to live with me and I have no legal custody of her, that child is officially homeless. If your brother’s house is destroyed and he moves in with you and that’s not his official residence, he’s homeless under the federal definition. It kind of inflates that number of what we think of someone who doesn’t have anywhere to sleep. But it also applies to those people who are sleeping in cars, people who are sleeping in substandard housing. We have a lot of trailers in Columbus that you see in somebody’s backyard that looks like it’s been condemned and you find out someone is actually living there. They’re considered homeless as well, so that’s where the 154 (figure) comes from.”
Brown said children who live at Safe Haven, a shelter for women who have been victims of domestic violence, are also considered homeless. He added that the 154 students were not at the district at the same time.
“During the course of the year we had 154 kids to go through our district who met that criteria. They weren’t all here at one time but we had to serve them during the time that they were here.”
To help those children, the district asked for $20,000 of federal assistance. Brown said that number has increased in recent years to meet the growing demand. Last year, the district asked for $10,000.
Growing need
Fannon said part of the problem is the increasing number of evictions, combined with the lack of shelters in Columbus. When a family is evicted from their home, they are often faced with a last-minute decision of where to stay. Without a homeless shelter in the Golden Triangle, the family can become transient.
Fannon said she has known families who wander Walmart at night so their children don’t have to face the dangers of sleeping on the street.
Currently, there are two shelters in Columbus, but neither of those is classified as a homeless shelter. Women and their children can stay at Safe Haven while Recovery House is a shelter for men and women battling addiction. The nearest homeless shelter is in Tupelo, but Fannon said the shelter has been full for the past six months.
“Every time I’ve called in the last six months there hasn’t been a bed available,” she said.
There are also shelters in Meridian and Birmingham, but the distance often makes it difficult for families to travel to those places. Then, there is the issue of where to send their children to school once they do arrive.
Community Resource Center will pay for a hotel while a family is looking for a place to stay and the Columbus School District will send a bus to pick up the child so they can continue going to school.
However, Fannon said, the children are embarrassed to be seen getting picked up from a hotel and will beg their parents not to make them go to school.
“Those kids are embarrassed for the other kids to see that they’re having to live in a hotel,” she said.
Brown said in addition to picking the children up from a hotel, the district will provide assistance that the parents can’t.
The elementary schools in the district require children to wear uniforms and Brown said thanks to local charities, uniforms are provided to low income families. School supplies are provided as well. If local charities aren’t able to donate at the current moment, Brown said the district then dips into the $20,000 reserved for such situations.
“We utilize (the local charities) first but you run into those periods of time where they just don’t have it,” he said. “We call all of our local charities first and say, ‘Will you? Can you?’ When they can’t, we have to be ready to step in. That’s why we call it a Homeless Reservation. It’s reserved for them but we don’t necessarily use it first.”
When school is not in session, Brown said the district can not access the funds. That is when they rely on the generosity of others the most, he said.
This past Spring Break, Brown said a 17-year-old child was found sleeping on a park bench at The Riverwalk. Since the school and the district offices were closed, the district’s homeless coordinator had to call to ask for donations to put the teenager in a hotel room. People under 21 are not accepted in homeless shelters unless they are part of a family unit.
“We have a list of private people that I can call and ask and they will just do it, no questions asked,” Brown said. “If we can get private donors to do it, we can roll this money over for next year.”
Academically vulnerable
In addition to the Homeless Reservation, Brown said other federal funds are used to make sure homeless or low income children are academically at their current grade level.
One of the biggest impacts from being homeless is the hit the children’s grades take.
“Their grades are negatively impacted by being homeless,” he said.
Brown said the Mississippi Student Information System will begin to track the progress of low income and homeless children.
“You couldn’t do it in the past because those variables were not followed but we do follow those now,” he said.
Of the 4,566 children enrolled in Pre-K-5th grade in the district in the 2012-2013 year, 4,189 children were eligible for free or reduced lunch due to their economic status. Brown said due to that number, the state automatically expects the district to under-perform. However, Franklin Elementary, a school where 423 children out of 425 are eligible for free or reduced lunch, was recently awarded Title 1 Distinguished School Award.
“When you look at most national organizations that rate schools they have what is called value-added, where they look at your poverty rate and they say based on your poverty rate you have actually out-achieved what we expected you do.
“For the last three years running, we have had a school that won the National Title I Distinguished School Award: Sale, Stokes-Beard and, this year, Franklin. When they looked at their achievement test scores, these school performed way above what you would expect just looking at this economic information. They’re closing the achievement gap.”
Brown said with the number of homeless children in Columbus, the key to their education is locked in federal programs.
“That’s the whole thing that you’re trying to do with federal programs, make sure that these kids have at least a chance,” Brown said. “Some of them don’t. But we have to try.”
Sarah Fowler covered crime, education and community related events for The Dispatch.
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