In Search of Roots : Homelessness Strains the Students--and the Schools

Nine-year-old Maresha Laffoon already knows what she wants out of life. The sandy-haired fourth-grader hopes to become a model when she grows up, and “live in a big mansion with (her) family.”

But for now, Maresha’s wishes are far more simple.

“I just want to stay in one place,” she said in a soft voice, tinged with frustration.

Yet nothing has been more elusive. Homeless for more than a year, Maresha and her family have moved 13 times in search of shelter.

They have slept on the floor of a church and lived in cheap motels so surly that Maresha is afraid to play outside. Instead, she waits until she goes to school.

“That’s really the only time I get to play,” she said.

At Coeur D’Alene Avenue Elementary School in Venice, which she recently attended, Maresha’s experience is all too common.

With nearly a third of its 300 students homeless, the school has earned the dubious distinction of having the highest student transiency rate in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Teachers and administrators there are all too familiar with the problems these youths face: from low self-esteem to the lack of adequate health care. That makes the job of educating much more challenging, since lessons taught today may be unlearned tomorrow as students move from shelter to shelter--and school to school.

Just last week Maresha rejoined that number.

After barely three months, the family had to leave the Venice church where they were living and are again searching for shelter. The move means that Maresha will enroll in yet another school--her fourth this academic year.

“She gets into a school, she makes a few friends, she gets comfortable and it’s off to another school,” said Pamela Gains, Maresha’s mother, who noted that her daughter had adjusted to Coeur D’Alene better than any other school she attended.

Gaines, her husband and their three children became homeless after work through a temporary agency began to slow up and the family could no longer pay the rent.

Going to school after school has been painful for Maresha. Sometimes, there are fistfights and verbal wars:

“Kids used to tease me because I live (at the shelter). And I said, ‘At least I have a roof over my head,’ ” she recalled with soft defiance.

Now the roof over Maresha’s head is changing again. And so is her school.

Her abrupt departure from Coeur D’Alene underscores the difficulty of educating homeless students even when there is enough money and services available.

The problem is not faced at Coeur D’Alene alone: It is a growing and troubling phenomenon across the city and nation. The state Department of Education places the number of homeless school-age children in greater Los Angeles at 14,000, but homeless advocates say it is impossible to obtain an accurate count and the number is much higher--perhaps twice that amount.

In response, Los Angeles schools are changing. Recently, the school district and the California Homeless Coalition co-sponsored the first conference on educating homeless youths. Participants discussed ways of improving coordination between schools and social service agencies to better serve these students.

And the district has changed the residency requirement to make enrollment easier for homeless youths, said Jackie Goldberg, school board president and keynote speaker at the conference.

“The standard first question to every youngster that comes through a public school door is, ‘Do you have proof of your home address? Did you bring a light bill or a water bill?’ ” Goldberg said.

Instead of requiring these documents, the school board allows homeless parents to enroll their children by signing an affidavit that says they are homeless but live temporarily in the district.

State education officials also made changes, recently issuing an advisory allowing districts to use post office boxes and letters from social workers and other documents as proof of residency.

Throughout the district, schools with large homeless populations have taken steps to help these youths cope.

But the model of how to deal most effectively with the needs of homeless students is Coeur D’Alene school, district officials said, where efforts have been under way for years.

With a $70,000 grant from the Greater Los Angeles Partnership for the Homeless and the support of the school board, Coeur D’Alene has created the Connection Project, considered the most comprehensive program for homeless students. Since September, the school has had extra counseling and nursing staff and a social worker to help meet the educational and social needs of displaced youths and their families.

The grant for the highly respected project will run out in two months, which has sent school officials scrambling to raise money to continue the program.

On Thursday, the school held an art sale sponsored by New Yorker magazine and the Los Angeles Advertising Club, which featured the work of Coeur D’Alene students. It’s too soon to tell how much the sale brought in, but Coeur D’Alene Principal Beth Ojena said there were “some good contributions.”

Other fund-raising activities are planned by parents, teachers and homeless advocates who want to keep the program alive for kids like Maresha.

“We desperately need (the program),” said John Ochoa, executive director of the Partnership for the Homeless. “This is a very critical program not only for Los Angeles, but nationally.”

The partnership has financed the Connection Project to show other schools how to educate homeless youths, Ochoa said. In the past, the needs of these children have gone “unnoticed by districts and shelters.”

“We need to ensure that someone is speaking for the children,” he said. “They didn’t cause homelessness but they’re on the streets, they’re being abused, they’re malnourished. That’s no way to bring up a generation of Americans. The public needs to understand that these children do exist.”

Ojena, who also is the co-designer of the Connection Project, said many homeless students have serious academic deficiencies.

On the average, homeless students lag two to three years behind their classmates. Some miss school because they are embarrassed and feel stigmatized by their situation, or because they are constantly moving with their families in search of shelter.

“Many of these kids will register to as many as nine schools a year,” Ochoa said. “That is a tragedy.”

Even when the children are in school, basic needs such as health care, clothes and food make learning difficult.

Cruz C. Castanon, a psychologist at Coeur D’Alene, said some students come to the school with behavioral problems and need counseling to deal with the anxiety and stress caused by homelessness.

Substance abuse plays a major role, added Jean Gutierrez of Broadway Elementary School. Some of the homeless students have been abused or have witnessed violent crimes stemming from drug abuse by a relative or others in their surroundings, she said. They bring all of these experiences with them to school, further complicating behavioral and academic problems.

But Castanon noted that at least some of the problems facing these youths could be solved if more money were available.

One student, for example, suffered from an extremely low self-image, Castanon said, part of which could have been remedied with a new dress.

“If this little girl had a dress, she would feel 100% better,” Castanon said, looking at a picture the girl had drawn of herself: a stick figure with a sad face dressed in boy-like clothes. When asked to draw a picture of how she wanted to look, the girl drew a figure with a happy face in a frilly dress.

Few schools are able to do what Coeur D’Alene does for its homeless students.

The additional school nurse makes referrals for students to receive eyeglasses and other health-care needs at no charge, and the school social worker helps families obtain other services. In a computer lab donated by the Riordan Foundation, the kids learn to read by writing.

Although the Connection Project is highly respected, budgetary cuts make it a long shot to receive additional financial support from the district, Ojena said. Still, the yearlong program has made a difference in the lives of homeless students, supporters said, if only for a short time.

“We feel a lot of success and a lot of pride in what is going on here, because the kids are happy,” Ojena said.