County Project Takes School to Homeless Youth

When she arrives at the campground, the children come running as if she was passing out candy or toys. But what the white-haired, middle-age grandmother delivers from the trunk of her old Chevrolet pickup is education.

Her classroom is all of Orange County and her days are long as she moves from campground to campground, sometimes traveling 100 miles or more in eight or 10 hours.

Her pupils come from families that have fallen on hard times or those that have never provided much shelter or nurturing. Some of the children are fastidious. Others are barefoot and dirty. They have one thing in common: They are homeless.

“It’s unbelievable that in the United States of America we don’t have something better to offer these people,” said Ann Robinson, who teaches children living in Orange County parks and campgrounds, in a county pilot project begun in December.

These children are part of a growing problem in California, which ranked second only to New York state in its number of homeless school-age children, according to a report issued last year by the U.S. Department of Education.

From the end of 1988 to the end of 1989, the number of homeless children between the ages of 5 and 18 climbed by nearly 4,000 in California--from 25,000 to 28,800--according to a report submitted by state officials in January to the federal agency. About half of those children live in greater Los Angeles, an area that includes Orange County.

California education officials caution that the number is only a guess and that because of the difficulty in tracking the homeless, estimates might be far too low.

“It’s a tragedy,” Robinson said. “I’m really sorry that there’s a need for this, but I’m glad that if there’s a need I’m the one who gets to take care of it. I really, really love my job. I have the best job in the whole county.”

Robinson taught in elementary schools in Kansas for 13 years before she and her husband moved to Orange County two years ago. She was looking for something different, she said, when she met Red Balfour. He had just been named principal of Orange County’s fledgling education program for the homeless, initiated in response to new state and federal laws.

In 1987, Congress passed the Stuart B. McKinney Homeless Act, which among other things ordered states to come up with plans to make public education accessible to the homeless. States that complied were eligible for seed money for pilot programs.

California has so far received $760,000, which has been divided among 16 counties and school districts. Balfour’s shoestring program received $8,000. He used the money to help fund one county teaching position, which Robinson filled.

State and local officials concede that the public money spent so far on education programs for the homeless is only a token gesture.

“I think what it’s trying to do is create a focus,” said James Spano, coordinator of the state Department of Education’s program for the homeless. Homeless students, Spano noted, face both legal and social stumbling blocks that keep them out of the classroom. Many, for example, stay out because they cannot meet strict residency requirements.

State education officials recently issued an advisory urging local school districts to allow homeless families to use post office boxes, letters from social workers and receipts from campgrounds to document their residency in a school district, Spano said.

But local educators say that the state’s recommendation is unrealistic. Most homeless families are nearly always on the move: They are allowed to stay at a local campground or park for no more than two weeks at a time.

“To try and enroll them in a school would just wreak havoc,” said William Habermehl, assistant superintendent for instructional services for the Orange County Department of Education. “It takes more than two weeks to fill out the paper work.”

Homeless children also miss school because they lack required immunizations or because they are simply too tired, too hungry or too embarrassed to go to school, said Phillip Kauble, an administrator with the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Kauble has helped organize a regional education conference on the homeless, which will be held Thursday in East Los Angeles. Among issues to be discussed, he said, are methods for instilling in children a sensitivity to classmates who are homeless.

“Kids can be cruel,” Kauble said. “To have somebody tease you--you don’t have a home; your clothes are rags--that’s one of the worse kinds of abuse a child can endure. . . . There’s a lot of shame involved.”

Ann Robinson deals each day with problems of self esteem.

Sometimes she finds it tough not to feel overwhelmed by the myriad family tragedies facing her pupils. “I talk to myself a lot on some days,” she said.

“I want them to know they’re intelligent. I want them to know that they count--that they will always belong.”

On a warm day last week, one of Robinson’s stops was O’Neill Regional Park in Trabuco Canyon, where 7-year-old Sarah Parker and her parents live for two weeks at a time.

Until the family met Robinson a couple of months ago, Sarah had received little formal education. Rather than ask her daughter to skip from school to school, Sarah’s mother chose to teach her.

“I was just groping in the dark,” Gerrie Parker, Sarah’s mother, said.

Sitting at a picnic table outside their small mobile home, Parker, who is 50, smiled as she described her youngest as the surprise package that came after her other four children were grown.

A few years after her birth, Sarah’s father, a milk truck driver, became disabled and they gave up their home in Pennsylvania, her mother said.

The hardships seem not to have affected Sarah--lanky, blond and precocious, with a heart-shaped face and a generous sprinkling of freckles across her nose.

At this particular tutoring session, she wore a puffed-sleeved pinafore dress. Perched on a picnic table, she peered into the solar oven that she built from a cardboard box, tinfoil and piece of glass to see whether her potato slices had turned into French fries yet.

What she likes most about going to Robinson’s school, Sarah said, is the chance to be in a contest. She is entering her solar oven in the science fair. On its side is marked, “Sarah Parker, Second Grade.”

She most dislikes subtraction, Sarah said. But when the time came for mathematics, Sarah scooped a handful of pebbles from the gravel parking lot and headed for the picnic table where Robinson had placed a math workbook.

“When you’re in the park you have all kinds of things” to count, Robinson told Sarah. Then she chided her gently. “A subtraction page, now. Don’t be trying to slip that addition off on me when I’m not looking.”

Later that day, Robinson checked on 12-year-old Michael Close. His family had just moved from an Orange County park to Rancho Jurupa Campground in Riverside County. His mother said that they have been homeless since they were evicted from their Westminster apartment in late October.

Michael quit going to Weber Elementary School around Thanksgiving. Now he and his 13-year-old sister live with their mother and her boyfriend in a dilapidated truck and a pop-up camper.

Michael is fastidiously neat and poised.

At 12, he is already strikingly handsome and hip, with slightly longish blond hair, black high-tops and earring. Michael had called Robinson twice that week and was eager to show off his new earring.

When Robinson arrived, Michael asked if she could sign up more students. Two small children, who live with a family of six in a tent and camper nearby, sat next to Michael on a picnic table.

“Her 4. I’m 6,” Christopher Lyle said by way of introduction.

“Good. And can you show me how many six is?” Robinson responded.

Before leaving about an hour later, she had tested their skill levels, talked to their parents and enrolled them. As Robinson headed to her car, Joanmarie Lyle, 4, called out after her.

“Hey,” she said proudly, “I go to school now.”

Life LESSONS: Tutoring homeless children is education for volunteers. A33