Keeping Homeless Kids in School

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After moving to a shelter across town last fall, Ty'jhanae Walker, 7, still attends the Minneapolis school that is lending her a violin. Her bus ride takes an hour each way.

Brian Lesteberg for TIme

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Right now, nearly 1 in 10 children attending public school in Minneapolis is homeless. Read that sentence again.

As Wall Street tries to right itself, the global economic crisis is punishing many of the youngest Americans. Preliminary nationwide figures indicate that there were nearly 16% more homeless students in the 2007-08 academic year than in the previous year. And the number of homeless students continues to climb as more parents face foreclosure or the unemployment line. Of some 1,700 school districts surveyed this fall in a separate study, 69% said they had already counted at least half as many homeless students during the first few months of this academic year as they did in all of the last one. By Thanksgiving, 330 districts — including Las Vegas; Albuquerque, N.M.; and San Bernardino, Calif. — had equaled or surpassed the previous year's total. At these rates, 2008-09 could top the 2005-06 academic year, when Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast and 1 in 50 American children experienced homelessness, according to another report released this month. (See pictures of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis.)

Over the past two decades, Minneapolis' 33,000-student district has seen a steady increase in the number of homeless kids, as the Twin Cities area has hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs and the supply of affordable housing has dwindled. The recession has worsened the problem: between July and December, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) tallied nearly 20% more homeless students than during the same period the year before. Perhaps out of necessity, the district has become a national model for how to identify what it refers to as "highly mobile students" and ensure that their education is not interrupted. Case in point: Since September, when second-grader Ty'jhanae Walker moved with her family to a shelter across town from her school, the 7-year-old has ridden a bus an hour each way so she can keep going to Ramsey International Fine Arts Center. Her mother Denise Powe wants her to stick with the K-8 school — which currently has at least 24 other students classified as highly mobile — because she doesn't want Ty'jhanae to fall behind. "Different schools learn at different paces, so I'm really pushing for her to stay in Ramsey," Powe says. "Moving Ty'jhanae is going to be my very last resort. Her education is my life."

Since 1987, federal law has required districts to help homeless children stay enrolled at one school continuously, as any move could set these kids back several months academically. Under the law, a district must provide free transportation — whether by taxi, city bus or school bus — even if the child is staying in a shelter outside its boundaries. Every year, MPS spends more than $1.5 million transporting homeless students. On a recent morning, seven buses arrived at Ty'jhanae's shelter to deliver 21 kids to eight different schools.

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