برچسب: Help

Thousands of LA students experience homelessness; we must act urgently to help them

Encampments line the street that runs along Virgil Middle School’s lower field in Los Angeles County on November 30, 2022.

Credit: Kate Sequeira / EdSource

Homelessness and housing are at the center of political, policy and budget conversations across California, with indelible images of tents on sidewalks and people struggling against addiction and mental health often driving our understanding of the crisis.

But homelessness is not only a story of encampments or shelters; it is a story of women, children and families, who are among the fastest-growing populations of people experiencing homelessness. These are too often the invisible faces of this crisis, and we must recognize them and act urgently to deliver solutions.

According to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, students qualify as homeless if they lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. This includes children who live doubled or tripled up with other families, in hotels, motels, shelters or other temporary arrangements.

Today, Los Angeles County serves 1.3 million students across 80 school districts, with 47,689 students identified as experiencing homelessness in 2022-23.

These figures do not include our earliest learners — children from birth to transitional kindergarten — or the many families on the brink of housing instability, often one emergency away from becoming unhoused. Young children in unstable housing situations are among the most vulnerable, with their development and well-being deeply impacted by housing insecurity.

In Los Angeles County, voters are weighing Measure A, a citizens’ initiative that would repeal and replace the existing ¼ cent homelessness sales tax, set to expire in two years, with a new, ½ cent sales tax. The measure, tied to accountability and results, is expected to bring in $1.1 billion annually to the county to fund affordable housing, mental health and substance abuse services.

Crafted by a coalition of housing experts, mental health professionals, labor leaders and community advocates, Measure A applies lessons learned from past efforts to expand investments in mental health and substance abuse services to get unhoused Angelenos off the streets and into treatment, increase resources for housing to make it more affordable for everyone, require accountability with clear goal-setting, regular audits and spending reports, and move funding away from programs that do not show proven results.

Measure A also establishes a new governance approach to deploy resources into one unified plan for addressing homelessness and the housing crisis. This plan is also informed by a Leadership Table made up of a cross-section of community leaders who will make funding and policy decisions about how these critical resources are spent that includes seats for education agency leaders and experts.

We believe that the innovations in Measure A would help develop stronger collaborations between school districts, housing agencies and nonprofits to offer wraparound services for families and create systems that make it easier for families to self-identify without stigma. By expanding housing programs that prioritize families and include transitional housing options connected to schools, we can better ensure that no student falls through the cracks.

On the ground, our dedicated teachers, administrators and campus staff are navigating the challenges of homelessness with our families every day. For example, recently we had a single mother facing homelessness send her older daughter who had special needs to live with relatives, while she tried to find housing with her younger daughter. They moved around often, and getting to school was difficult.

The school worked with the family to arrange transportation for the younger daughter so she could stay in school and helped the mother find crisis housing. Once the family was in temporary housing, the mom brought her older daughter back home, and the school helped set up transportation for her as well, allowing both children to attend school consistently.

Measure A would help provide the dedicated resources for housing programs and critical services that our communities need to weather these challenges without disrupting their education to break the cycle of instability.

Without stable housing, students struggle to succeed academically and emotionally, leading to long-term consequences for our communities. By shifting some of the county’s homelessness funding toward preventive and family-focused solutions, we can make a lasting difference in the lives of children and help break the cycle of poverty and homelessness.

We must recognize the invisible faces of homelessness and prioritize their needs. We owe it to our students and families to ensure sustained funding, accountable spending, and a holistic, regional approach that expands our understanding of homelessness beyond individuals on the street to include students and families living in unstable housing situations. We must center on preventive and family-focused solutions, or risk losing the potential of an entire generation. It’s not just a matter of education; it’s a matter of equity, compassion, and justice, and a thriving future for California.

•••

Debra Duardo, M.S.W., Ed.D., is the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools. Miguel A. Santana, is the president and CEO of the California Community Foundation.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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05/05/2025
Can theater help prevent violence in schools?

Children learn conflict resolution and social-emotional learning through theater.

credit: NorCal Arts

Michele Hillen-Noufer describes herself at 13 as “the shyest kid in the world.” She always loved ballet but hated public speaking until her father persuaded her to try out for “Godspell.” She wanted to dance in the show, not sing. She was so scared out of her wits that she cried throughout the audition. But she made a breakthrough that day that shaped the course of her life.

“I didn’t start speaking up until I started doing theater,” said Hillen-Noufer, who now teaches children’s theater at Sacramento State University. “It broke me out of my shyness. As I say to the students, this is not just about projecting your voice on stage, it’s also about asserting your voice in the world.”

When she raised the curtain on NorCal Arts, a Sacramento-based arts education organization in 2020, Hillen-Noufer was hoping to bring that kind of transformative emotional power to young people, to enrich students’ lives with the magic of theater. The organization works with roughly 10,400 students in the Sacramento region, including the Sacramento City Unified School District, Folsom Cordova Unified School District, the Elk Grove Unified School District and the Washington Unified School District.

“We think arts is important for all students, not just those that can afford it,” said Hillen-Noufer, executive director of NorCal Arts.

She never had an inkling that those acting classes might also help prevent acts of violence in our bruising age of school shootings and CEO assassinations. Then she landed a $600,000 grant from the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to teach the kind of conflict resolution skills that can de-escalate a violent atmosphere. Now her theater arts program goes beyond song and dance to teach social-emotional learning at a time when student misbehavior has skyrocketed in schools and what are sometimes called deaths of despair are rising among young adults.

Michele Hillen-Noufer founded NorCal arts, a youth theater program.
Credit: NorCal Arts

“Though it may seem surprising to consider theater education as a means of preventing violence,” said William Braniff, director of the Department of Homeland Security Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, in a statement, “this creative, multidisciplinary strategy utilizing theater arts to teach conflict resolution skills effectively tackles the underlying systemic issues that contribute to violence, all while enhancing the safety and resilience of local communities.”

Many sociologists have argued that fraying social connections, often spurred by rapid technological change, have undermined civic participation and community bonding. Robert D. Putnam’s influential 2000 book “Bowling Alone” traces the decline of social connectedness in America, from unions to bowling leagues, and how this trend might breed polarization and undermine the workings of participatory democracy. Trusting in your neighbors, experts say, may be key to building back trust in the electoral process.

“Theater is a profound tool for violence prevention because it fosters empathy, emotional literacy and healing,” said Allison Gamlen, visual and performing arts coordinator for the San Mateo County Office of Education. “Through storytelling and role-playing, students activate their mirror neurons, the part of the brain that helps us feel what others feel, allowing them to truly step into another person’s shoes. Theater gives young people a safe space to explore challenging situations, process emotions, and even experiment with different outcomes. By embodying characters and committing to their circumstances, students learn to understand and navigate complex emotions — both their own and others’.”

Drama can be an antidote to alienation, some say. At its core, theater is about baring your soul and making connections with others. It’s about being vulnerable and tapping into a sense of shared humanity. Creating a sense of community is one way to combat hostility before it hardens into hate and violence.

“You’ll never know if somehow the work we’re doing prevented a school shooter, but to do theater you have to collaborate, to express emotions,” said Hillen-Noufer. “You have to step into someone else’s shoes, connect with your peers, make eye contact.”

Combating the sense of disaffection that has pervaded much of American society is key to teaching theater as a form of conflict resolution. Hillen-Noufer’s group has brought this program to roughly 400 classrooms across the Sacramento region. Students tap into theater skills to build empathy and manage disagreements, something many adults struggle with in our polarized world.

“Think about a student in the classroom who feels rejected,” said Hillen-Noufer. “They don’t feel a sense of belonging. And they go online, and then they start to feel more isolated. And then they get radicalized to violence. The next thing you know, you’ve got your school shooter.”

Dramatic arts exercises create a safe space to explore dark feelings, what triggers them, and how to disarm them, without fear of judgment.

Sparking a sense of calm also defuses tension before it builds. Sometimes children just need to slow their roll, experts say, and take a deep breath.

Children gain SEL and conflict resolution skills through a theater class.
Credit: NorCal Arts

Learning how to control their emotions through mindfulness techniques can help children avoid the brain fog built into our innate fight or flight response, experts say. Critical thinking skills often abandon us when emotions run high.

“We are all boiling kettles right now, so it’s easy to fly off the handle,” said Hillen-Noufer. “Theater can help give kids tools to calm down and look inward.”

Like sports, the arts can also create a focal point that students can rally around, inoculating them from alienation. Buoyed by the exhilaration of social interaction, something anxious children all too often miss out on, experts say, bonding becomes easier. Classmates begin to feel more like they are all on the same team.

“The dopamine released during the creative play of theater also plays a critical role in healing trauma, as it creates a sense of joy, safety and reward, rewiring the brain toward resilience,” said Gamlen. “This process not only supports individual healing but also strengthens the capacity for compassion and connection, building a foundation for healthier, more empathetic communities.”

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28/04/2025
For former foster care students, college help exists long after exiting the system

Deborah Vanessa Lopez, left, is a program manager that works with students formerly in the foster system at Rio Hondo College. She has worked with Faylen Bush, right, who is set to transfer out of Rio Hondo College this year.

Credit: Faylen Bush and Deborah Vanessa Lopez

When Faylen Bush returned to college in 2023 after being laid off from work, he planned to pursue construction management to build on the skill set he had acquired over several years in that field as a concrete carpenter and protect himself from future layoffs.

He was married and had three young children, and he had little time to spare as he pursued a more stable future for his family. He knew that to succeed in college, he needed to remain more focused on his career goals than he was when he had been in college about a decade earlier, when he was first entering adulthood after leaving the foster system amid a cycle of housing instability and juvenile detention.

Faylen Bush

And so, when a program at his school, Rio Hondo College in Los Angeles County, reached out to Bush with resources for students with experience in the foster system, he paid little attention. He was unsure that the resources would apply to him at all because he was in his early thirties.

But the program, Guardian Scholars, was persistent. They tried to reach him multiple times until he finally decided to go to their office and learn more. He learned that Guardian Scholars is a chapter-based organization across California’s college campuses that supports students who have foster care experience. It is an organization that, since its inception in 1998 at Cal State Fullerton, has sought to increase college enrollment, retention, and graduation rates among former foster youth as a pathway toward overall stability in their lives.

“I can honestly say that stepping into the office, sitting with Deborah, and having that conversation opened up a whole world of opportunities for me,” said Bush of his first meeting with Guardian Scholars staff.

“Deborah” is Deborah Lopez, a Guardian Scholars program manager. She and her team connect students with access to counselors who are trained to support former foster youth, grants to purchase textbooks, meal vouchers, on-campus jobs, access to conferences to further students’ professional networks, and more.

“Our students experience a tremendous amount of trauma even if it was one day or 15 years of their life” in foster care, Lopez said. This thinking serves as the foundation for their program: They extend support to every single Rio Hondo College student with experience in the foster system, no matter when or how long their experience was.

Bush said he is aware of the statistics he is up against given his upbringing. According to a national 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, far fewer students with experience in foster care have a bachelor’s degree — nearly 5% for men and about 9% for women, than students without foster experience, about 31% for men and close to 36% for women.

Deborah Lopez

These rates persist despite several studies showing that the majority of current and former foster youth report an interest in attending and graduating from college.

But Lopez knows the statistics of the students who have received support targeted to their foster care background. For example, across the California community colleges, students are more likely to enroll in credit-bearing courses and to remain enrolled in school if they are enrolled in foster-specific support programs, according to a 2021 report from John Burton Advocates for Youth, an influential nonprofit that advocates for California’s homeless and foster youth.

“One of the things that has worked for us as a program is consistency,” said Lopez, who has worked with the program for nearly a decade.

While many of their students have graduated and transferred from Rio Hondo, some have needed to cut back on classes or drop out altogether. “But eventually, they come back, and we’re here,” said Lopez.

With the support he has received, Bush has not only remained on track to transfer to a four-year university later this year — he has applied to several Cal State and University of California schools, though he is particularly interested in UCLA. His career goal has also changed in the year-and-a-half since he returned to school. He is now pursuing psychology and a career in counseling, and, while the career change might seem abrupt, it’s a return to the goals he had about a decade ago.

Foster youth also need a blueprint

As Bush tells it, the consistent instability throughout his childhood played a critical role in how his life unfolded as he entered adulthood.

“The system is trying to help … and it’s providing homes, but I still feel like a necessary component is to provide that blueprint for success after you age out,” said Bush of the foster system.

He went on to describe the blueprint that a teenager without foster experience might have: If their parents went to college, they might also attend college; if their parents were part of the workforce, they might decide to pursue a similar path after high school.

“Someone who has experienced the foster system, they don’t have that blueprint and, sadly, the statistics show there’s a small percentage of success stories,” he added.

He was around 10 years old when both of his parents died, leaving him and his sister in the foster system. Their maternal grandmother was near them in Lancaster, a city in northern Los Angeles County, but she was caring for her own young children plus some of her grandchildren and couldn’t take them in.

They remained in foster placement for two years until an aunt in Louisiana reached out and requested they be placed with her.

Thus began Bush’s experience with kinship in which a child in foster care is placed with a family member. He was living with family once again, but his life was no more stable than before.

“I can honestly say she tried her best, but she didn’t really have the resources to fully cater to our needs. To her it was more like, OK, you guys live with me now,’ and that’s it,” Bush said. “But there was trauma that needed to be addressed. There was, for both of us, abandonment issues that needed to be addressed.”

By the time he was 14, Bush was regularly suspended from school, eventually missing enough days to become truant and land in juvenile detention.

“That set a course for me, going in and out of juvenile corrections,” he said. He continued getting into trouble, eventually spending over a year inside.

Once released at 16, he returned to his aunt’s home, but he had developed resentment toward her because she had not visited him during his time inside. He learned that she continued receiving payment as he was still officially under her care, and so began a cycle of housing instability as he began to stay at friends’ homes and hotel rooms rather than sleep at his aunt’s home.

To route the payment to himself and pay for housing, Bush figured out how to emancipate himself at 17. It’s a process that Lopez noted few of their students go through given its difficulty.

Bush knew he had a path forward: football. After his time in juvenile detention, his football coach continued to invest in him, sending him to university training camps. But his behavior landed him in trouble again, and he was in a fight so bad during the summer going into his senior year of high school that the coach ended the relationship.

“I would always wind up in situations where I’m in trouble. I always used to ask myself when I was in front of the principal, when I was in front of the judge, ‘Why am I here?’ said Bush, reflecting on his youth. “And then I learned over time, it’s the decisions that I’m making.”

“Before, there were a lot of things that were happening that were out of my control,” he continued. He slowly learned there were things he had control over, such as his path toward emancipation, but without the proper, stable guidance of an adult through his upbringing, he was often unclear on how to properly use that newfound power.

Unable to play football after the fight, he reached out to a former foster parent in California who agreed to take him in so he could start fresh in his home state.

With his high school requirements complete, he attended Southwest College in Los Angeles, playing football for the team and eventually landing a scholarship to continue playing the sport in Oklahoma.

He had dreams of continuing his studies in psychology, eventually earning a doctorate in the field and becoming a school counselor.

But the pressure of supporting his family took center stage once he and his now-wife had their first child, so he declined his university scholarship. “It was such a big transition at that time, and I felt the need to support my family,” said Bush.

From then through the fall of 2023, Bush worked odd jobs and eventually secured stable work in the construction industry as he and his wife had two more children. His return to school was prompted by his layoff, but he was also keenly aware of the harsh reality of working in such a physically demanding field.

“The longevity for a Black carpenter isn’t that long. I have to figure out how I’m going to maneuver within this industry so that I can make it for at least 15 years,” he said of his thinking at the time.

It wasn’t long after landing in the Guardian Scholars office that he began thinking more deeply about his goals. What began as a return to school to secure job stability in a field he’d entered solely to provide for his family has since become a path back to the goals Bush had long before he had the level of support he has found with Lopez and her team at Guardian Scholars.

“My daughters and my son,” he said. “I feel they are the best thing out of my whole life. I’m trying to put myself in a position where I can be the best example and the best provider for them. I know now, at 33, with all my life experiences, this is what seems clearest to me.”

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23/04/2025
Trump Plans to Harass More NonProfits that Help Poor People: His Easter Message

Politico reports that Trump plans to go after the tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations he doesn’t like or send in DOGE to destroy them. Should we refer to him as King Donald? He also intends to wipe out the career civil service, replacing civil servants with appointees who are committed to his agenda, not to the U.S. government.

His second term is not about making America “great again” but about vengeance, retribution, and cruelty, as well as complete power over the federal government. Trump is now intent on punishing anyone who ever criticized him or stood in his way. It doesn’t matter to him that federal law prohibits the President from influencing IRS decisions. When has a law ever stopped him? Emoluments clause? Forget about it. Due process? No way. A nonpartisan civil service? No way.

Politico reported:

LATEST: President DONALD TRUMP announced this afternoon that he plans to invoke “Schedule F,” which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. The change would make it easier for Trump to fire career government employees he believes are not in line with his agenda. The move comes three months after a Day One executive order which reinstalled Schedule F from his first term.

“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” Trump said in his post. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”

NONPROFITS FEEL THE HEAT: The Trump administration is mounting a sweeping offensive on America’s nonprofit sector, deploying a blend of funding cuts, the elimination of tax benefits, bureaucratic paralysis and even installing a small DOGE team to target organizations that challenge the president’s agenda.

The tactics include indirect measures, like hollowing out entire grant-making agencies like AmeriCorps and USAID, and making federal personnel or contract cuts at other agencies so deep that groups can no longer access grants or loans. But there are also more direct efforts, like visits from DOGE or the USDA halting $500 million in deliveries to food banks.

DOGE staffers have attempted to install their own operatives inside major nonprofits like NeighborWorks, a community development group, and the Vera Institute, which advocates for lower incarceration rates.

It’s a campaign that’s hitting a sector that’s already struggling. “You’re cutting or eliminating government funding at the same time when donations are going down, at the same time that costs are going up for the nonprofits and the demand for their services is going up,” said RICK COHEN, chief communications officer at the National Council of Nonprofits.

In just over two months, at least 10,000 nonprofit workers have lost their jobs, according to an estimate from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And groups providing essential services including housing, education and domestic violence support — and who are already scrambling in an uncertain economic environment — could now face an even steeper funding drought.

“Non profits have been running wild off of the drunken unchecked spending of the federal government and that stopped on Jan 20. We are no longer going to support organizations that stand in stark contrast to the mission of the president of the United States,” White House spokesperson HARRISON FIELDS said in a statement.

The Trump White House is considering a budget proposal that would completely eliminate funding for Head Start, a federal program providing early childhood education administered by 1,700 nonprofit and for-profit organizations, the Associated Press reported. It’s unclear if Congress, as it did during Trump’s first term, will keep funding for groups that Trump’s proposed budgets stripped.

Meanwhile, other groups such as NeighborWorks and the Vera Institute are being pressured from the inside. DOGE staffers met with senior leadership at NeighborWorks on Tuesday and requested that a DOGE operative be embedded in the organization’s staff, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting granted anonymity to avoid retribution.

“NeighborWorks America is a congressionally chartered nonprofit corporation,” not a government agency, said NeighborWorks spokesperson DOUGLAS ROBINSON, emphasizing that the group is aligned with the administration’s housing goals.

NeighborWorks, which provides grants and training to 250 community development groups, is usually governed by a five-person board composed of senior leaders from five different federal agencies.

“There’s concern they’re going to load the board up, get rid of officers, and install someone else to implode the organization,” one of the people said. “Slashing that organization during a housing crisis really goes against the president’s platform of creating additional homes and the ticket to the American dream.”

At the same time, Trump is escalating rhetoric against nonprofits that don’t receive federal dollars but have challenged his administration, including good governance groups.

Asked this week about whether he’d consider revoking tax-exempt status from groups beyond Harvard, Trump singled out Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit ethics watchdog group. “They’re supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump.”

“For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government,” said CREW spokesperson JORDAN LIBOWITZ.

Meanwhile, White House officials are finalizing a set of executive orders that would revoke the tax-exempt status of environmental nonprofits, particularly those opposing oil, gas and coal development, Bloomberg reported. The move could be unveiled as early as Earth Day on Tuesday, symbolically reinforcing the administration’s fossil-fuel priorities.

Meanwhile the AP reported that DOGE contacted the Vera Institute of Justice, which tries to reduce incarceration rates, and said that DOGE planned to embed a team at Vera and all other nonprofits that receive federal funding. Vera told them they had already lost their federal funding so DOGE staffers were not welcome.

Vera, which has an annual budget of around $45 million that mostly comes from private funders, advocates for reducing the number of people imprisoned in the U.S. They consult with law enforcement and public agencies to design alternative programs to respond to mental health crises or traffic violations, and also support access to lawyers for all immigrants facing deportation.

Nonprofits told the AP that the Trump administration was eroding civil society by its efforts to undermine their work.

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20/04/2025
Chinese schools use Wowzers to help students learn remotely during Coronavirus crisis

As the number of Coronavirus cases rises in China, many schools are temporarily closed to prevent the disease from spreading. To preserve a sense of normalcy and keep students from falling behind, schools are using eLearning to continue students’ education. Schools from the Wuhan, Jinjiang, and Hexi districts, all part of the International Schools Consortium (iSC), are successfully using the Wowzers with their students.

Wowzers works with schools in the Sichuan Province that use NWEA’s MAP Growth assessments to customize a personalized learning path. By linking these assessments with Wowzers’ content, educators feel confident that students have the correct curriculum to meet their goals. Since the program is automatically individualized, educators find that remote learning through Wowzers is effective.

Principal John Ross Jones from Chengdu International reports that his students are continuing their learning through Wowzers. The students are engaged, and teachers can see their students’ progress in real-time, even adjusting their curriculum remotely and assigning homework and test prep work.

Wowzers has been very beneficial for us at this time as we are practicing home-based learning in our schools currently.

John Ross Jones, Principal of Chendu International

Many teachers use Wowzers’ dual-path system to create a new curriculum path for students as they learn from home. This way, the curriculum path they use in the classroom is undisturbed. SuJung Ham, of Tianjin International School, reports that his students are engaged and showing results.

It has been a real help during this time because not only are our students at home because of the virus but many of us teachers are also either at home or even in other countries. I personally came back to the States for a time and this has helped keep my students on track with Math remotely while they are in China, Korea, or one even in France.

Brandon Hoffman, Teacher of Tianjin International

The power of digital technology, combined with artificial intelligence, is invaluable during this time of crisis in China. As the threat of the virus spreads throughout the world, Wowzers has demonstrated that eLearning from home works.

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16/04/2025
How schools can help students facing homelessness get to class

Coming up with solutions to the transportation problems of homeless students would go a long way toward reducing chronic absenteeism, advocates say.

Credit: KATE SEQUEIRA/EDSOURCE

A quiet place to complete homework, free and stable transportation options, and not immediately being penalized for missed work are among the things that Te’yana Brown said could have helped her as she faced homelessness at different points between elementary and high school.

Instead, Brown spent most mornings trying to figure out how to get to her high school. Sometimes, a family member could drive her the 45 minutes to an hour to school, while on other days she took the bus. She missed so much school at one point that she was deemed chronically absent, meaning she’d missed at least 10% of the school year.

“I think they knew periodically because I would always have absences or I would always be tardy, but I don’t think they were really concerned because, either way, I usually got my work done,” Brown responded in a recent interview to a question about whether her school knew she was experiencing homelessness. “I guess they didn’t really want to make me feel bad about it, but I wish they would have provided a little bit more resources.”

Te’yana Brown was awarded a scholarship from SchoolHouse Connection, a national homeless advocacy organization that addresses how schools can increase attendance among students experiencing homelessness.

Brown was far from the only one finding it difficult to get to school as a student experiencing homelessness: Of the more than 246,000 homeless students in California during the 2022-23 school year, 40% were chronically absent, according to data analysis by SchoolHouse Connection and Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.

To prevent experiences like Brown’s is the reason for a new partnership between Attendance Works, a nonprofit aimed at boosting school attendance, and SchoolHouse Connection, a national homeless advocacy organization, to address how schools can increase attendance among students experiencing homelessness.

A federal law, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, was implemented decades ago to ensure homeless students are identified and supported. If a homeless student falls through the cracks, they miss out on services that could help them stay in school, even if their housing situation remains tenuous.

The two organizations spent months analyzing data and interviewing districts nationwide to understand how to bring homeless students back to school.

“There’s a way in which all of McKinney-Vento is about attendance. The entire effort is about increasing attendance, as well as supporting success,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection.

Among the top strategies they gathered are training school staff to identify whether a student might be homeless, working together across school departments to avoid penalizing students for challenges arising from homelessness, and focusing on transportation access.

Some specific examples of districts taking homeless students’ needs into account include a county in Virginia that coordinated bus routes to motels where homeless students were living. Students admitted to being embarrassed when their classmates would see where they lived, so the bus schedule was changed to make the motels the first stop each morning and the last stop after school.

In Fresno, a team of school officials at Coalinga-Huron Unified School District meets weekly to review academics, attendance and other factors related to homeless students’ education and then take steps to support those students through that week.

While identification of homelessness is required under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the people doing this work at schools are often understaffed and underfunded. Usually, they have to gather funding from sources unrelated to McKinney-Vento to comply with the law.

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth grant is a steady stream of funding targeted at this student population, but at $129 million nationwide, it does not reach all schools that enroll students experiencing homelessness. During the 2022-23 school year, for example, California received $14.6 million to support the educational needs of homeless students, but it reached only 127 of the state’s more than 2,000 districts. The year prior, California received $13.2 million in competitive grants that went to 136 districts.

A significant amount of federal pandemic recovery funds set aside for homeless students was also available starting in March 2021 — over $98 million that went to 92% of California’s school districts, though that was one-time funding.

A federal Department of Education study published this year found that local educational agencies that received those pandemic recovery funds saw a decrease of 5 percentage points in homeless students’ chronic absenteeism rate.

The study attributed this national trend to schools’ access to increased funding. Duffield pointed out that these decreases occurred even as student homelessness rose over the same period.

Brown was eventually able to get to school consistently and is now in her second year at Pitzer College, a private institution that is part of the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, studying management engineering on a full-ride scholarship.

Her path there, however, required transferring to a high school that offered her flexibility in managing her schoolwork and provided resources that helped her focus on school even as she looked for stable housing.

Brown’s story is not uncommon

Te’yana Brown speaks at her high school graduation.

Brown was never identified as homeless in high school despite showing signs that her basic needs were not being met, including being chronically absent and missing school assignments despite generally maintaining good grades.

She struggled academically in the first two years of high school, a time in which she and her family were doubling up with other families, eventually moving between motels. She said she didn’t receive resources outside of what all other students were offered, such as referring families to social services programs like CalWorks.

But her educational experience and her college aspirations changed when she transferred to a school that offered her more flexibility and support. Brown had started working part time at a Goodwill store at age 15, but she stayed on top of her academics because her new school was a hybrid program that required in-person classes only twice a week.

“Not all students have the flexibility to go to school eight hours a day,” Brown said. ”That can be really challenging when it comes to students from underserved communities.”

At her new school in the Pasadena area of Los Angeles, Brown had 24-hour access to tutoring platforms, regular check-ins with her teachers and academic counselor, and a college preparatory program that included university tours.

“I had a lot of other tasks that I needed to do, whether it be research for my family or working to actually support myself,” she said.

The research that Brown referred to was the time she spent searching for affordable housing for herself, her mother, and her sister.

Once Brown got into college and moved to on-campus housing, she turned to figuring out how her mother and sister could remain stable.

“It was really stressful because I had a lot of worry about how my family was going to survive. It really hurt my heart if I was able to go to college and have a roof over my head but they didn’t have a place of their own,” said Brown.

Brown’s sense of responsibility has permeated her academic life, her college application process, and her decisions now as a college student. For example, when she got an Amazon scholarship that included a housing stipend and a monthly salary, she saved most of her pay for a down payment on a home for her family.

Advocates say efforts to increase attendance will continue to fail if homeless students are not the central focus. Just last week, Fresno Unified’s school board voted to provide rental subsidies to 10 unhoused families with kids who were were chronically absent. This is the type of strategy that the partnership between Attendance Works and SchoolHouse Connection aims to highlight and help expand.

“If we’re devising strategies but we’re not paying attention to the specific circumstances of the youth who have the highest chronic absence rates and some really unique barriers,” Duffield said, “then those overall attendance efforts aren’t going to be successful.”

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13/04/2025
4 Strategies to Help Compassion Fatigue Teachers

Before even attending this training, I was looking for a new coffee mug for school that was big enough to hold my morning coffee. I came across the perfect one that read “Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.” Every morning as I am making my coffee, I take a second to reflect on this. My life is far from perfect. I’ve have had so many ups and downs and many times I questioned “can I have a break yet?” I have cried while making dinner, taking a shower, and into my pillow at night. Between the 20 kids that call me mom at school along with my own two boys, there is always someone to worry about. I worry about being enough for my kids, how their day is going while I am away, and if I am making the best choice going to work each day. I need to keep reminding myself to keep the balance of school and family. When I am at school, I worry about the kids being happy, if I am teaching them all they need to know, and if they are safe and happy when they leave my classroom. Then comes the struggles with a teaching job: classroom behaviors, changing curriculum, administration, standardized testing, and a school system that is constantly changing and expected more from teachers. But my life is wonderful! I have a wonderful husband and two happy and healthy kids. I love my job and I am excited for all that is to come. Life isn’t perfect but it is wonderful. Take time to focus on yourself and getting back to being positive and not fatigued. Compassion fatigue sneaks up on you quickly, having these strategies ready to go will help you combat it and make you feel more in control of your life and classroom and overall a happier and more positive person.

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13/04/2025
Trump Goes After Two Critics, and His Attorney General Will Help His Vendetta

Trump is following through on his frequent threats to punish anyone who crossed him in the past. He recently ordered his compliant Attorney General to investigate two men who were critical of him during his first term. Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, wrote about the tyrannical nature of this action and about Pam Bondi’s willingness to do whatever he wants.

Honig writes at the website Cafe, a hub for legal experts:

Donald Trump’s presidential payback tour rages on, and now it’s personal. It’s one thing to target multi-billion dollar law firms, universities, and media outlets for organizational retribution; those efforts, aimed at stifling and punishing any criticism or dissent, are reprehensible in their own right. But now Trump is going after individual private citizens, using the might of the Executive Branch to potentially throw his detractors in prison.

In a pair of official proclamations – rendered no less unhinged by the use of official fonts and White House letterhead – Trump identifies two targets who worked in the federal government during his first tenure and dared to speak out publicly against him. First: Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from 2018 to 2020 and made headlines when he publicly contradicted Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. For this act of heretical truth-telling, Trump labels Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor” – whatever the hell that means – who poses grave “risks” to the American public.

And then there’s Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who publicly criticized the President in an anonymous book and various media appearances. Taylor, like Krebs, purportedly poses “risks” to the United States, is a “bad-faith actor” (though apparently not a significant one like Krebs) and “stoked dissension” with his public commentary.

Are you scared? Don’t you fear the “risks” posed by these two monsters?

True to the form he has displayed when going after disfavored law firms, Trump hits below the belt. The President orders security clearances stripped not only from Krebs and Taylor but also from everyone who works with them (Krebs at a private cybersecurity firm, Taylor at the University of Pennsylvania). He’s punishing his targets – plus their employers and colleagues, First Amendment freedom of association be darned.

It gets worse. In a separate set of orders, Trump directed the Attorney General to open criminal investigations of Krebs and Taylor. Notably absent from the orders is any plausible notion that either might have committed a federal crime. This hardly needs to be said, but it’s not a federal crime to be a “bad-faith actor,” to “stoke dissension,” or even to be a “wise guy,” as Trump called Krebs from the Oval Office.

The next move is Pam Bondi’s – and we know how this will go.

Any reasonable, ethical attorney general would follow the bedrock principle that a prosecutor must have “predication” – some kernel of fact on which to believe a crime might have been committed – to open a criminal investigation. The bar is low, but it serves the vital purpose of preventing precisely the baseless retributive inquests that Trump has now ordered up. In observance of this foundational precept, even Bill Barr – the subject of sharp criticism in my first book, Hatchet Man – generally ignored Trump’s public pleas for the arrests of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and others. Like the exhausted parent of an unruly toddler, Barr would mostly sit back and let the tantrum pass.

Don’t count on Bondi taking the same course of passive resistance to the President. She has already shown her true colors, and they’re whatever shade Trump pleases. For example, despite the distinct possibility of criminality by top administration officials around the Signal scandal, the AG refused even to investigate. Instead, she decreed – after zero inquiry, with zero evidence – that information about military attack plans was somehow not classified, and that nobody had acted recklessly. Case closed, no inquiry needed.

Bondi no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. She’s in the bag for Trump. The question now is whether she’ll cross the line that even Barr, her crooked predecessor, would not, and use the Justice Department’s staggering investigative power as an offensive weapon.

Even if DOJ investigates but concludes it cannot bring a criminal charge, the threat to Krebs and Taylor is real. Any criminal inquiry takes an enormous toll on its subject; subpoenas fly, friends and colleagues get pulled into the grand jury, phones get seized and searched, legal costs mount, professional reputations suffer, personal ties fray. Ask anyone who has been investigated by the Justice Department but not indicted. They’ll tell you it’s a nightmare.

If Bondi does somehow convince a grand jury to indict somebody for something, Trump has unwittingly handed both Krebs and Taylor a potent defense: selective prosecution, which applies where an individual has been singled out for improper purposes. Exhibit A (for the defense): Trump’s own grand proclamations, which openly confess to his personal and political motives for ordering a Justice Department inquiry. Selective prosecution defenses rarely succeed, often because prosecutors typically don’t commit their improper motives to paper. But this would be the rare case where the evidence is so plain – it’s on White House letterhead, signed by the President – that a judge could hardly overlook it.

Trump has long made a habit of threatening his opponents with criminal prosecution through social media posts and by spontaneous outbursts from the lectern. Until now, it was mostly bluster, a public form of scream therapy for the capricious commander-in-chief. But now it’s in writing, from the president to the attorney general, who typically jumps to attention to serve whatever suits the boss, prosecutorial standards be darned. Trump’s dark fantasies are coming to life.

Elie Honig served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8.5 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5.5 years. He is currently a legal Analyst for CNN and Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities

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12/04/2025