Hope for Homeless Students : Youngsters to Have a Rolling Classroom

Since August, 7-year-old Sean Young has been in a decidedly less-than-desirable school environment. His “classroom” has no walls. Its floors are made of dirt and brush. Its ceiling is the sky.

Like other homeless children, Sean has had to make do with picnic tables or cramped campers when Ann Robinson--a county Department of Education teacher who travels to parks, motels and other areas frequented by the homeless--comes around with his lessons.

But thanks to a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Sean and his sister, Shana, 6, will soon have their phonics, math and penmanship lessons in a comfortable classroom on wheels.

The county Department of Education plans to use the grant, funded under the federal Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, to purchase a motor home and stock it with books, computers and screening facilities to monitor the students’ health.

“I think it’s fantastic,” said Sean and Shana’s father, Doc Young, 38, who has been living in Featherly Regional Park and other county campsites with his wife, Tracey, 26, and five children since August. “They’ll have something that’s more of a school atmosphere. On a rainy day, (the classes) won’t have to crowd inside a camper or a tent or meet in a restaurant. It’s much more conducive to studying.”

County Department of Education officials gathered reporters outside of Young’s campsite in Featherly Park Wednesday to discuss plans for expanding Project HOPE--Homeless Outreach Program for Education--and to show off a mobile school being used in another county education program that is similar to the motor home to be purchased for Project HOPE.

Red Balfour, principal of the county’s Community Home Education Program, said the new mobile school should be ready in about six weeks. The federal grant also will enable the county to buy a van and hire another full-time teacher and add two more instructional aides to serve homeless youngsters. Ultimately, Project HOPE will have two mobile homes and two vans staffed by two teachers and three instructional aides, he said.

About a third of Orange County’s estimated 6,000 to 10,000 homeless people are children, according to a survey released in February by the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force. Project HOPE--believed to be the only mobile education program in the United States--is the only program available that ensures at least some continuity in education for the homeless, Balfour said. The project keeps track of homeless families through an 800 number, which parents phone whenever they are about to move so that Robinson can visit them at their new locations, which she said includes parks, motels, warehouses and sometimes just a street corner.

Balfour said Robinson is responsible for assessing the children’s grade levels and putting together “a comprehensive educational program for them.” The students are then grouped by age and grade level, and Robinson teaches appropriate lessons to each group.

“It’s like the old one-room schoolhouse,” Robinson said, adding that she tries to get to see each child two or three times a week. An instructional aide visits the students on other days to check on their work and provide tutoring if necessary, Robinson said.

“We’re hoping this will be a pilot for the rest of the state,” Balfour said. He added that Orange County education officials are working with coordinators of homeless programs in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties to launch similar programs to better serve homeless families who often move from one county to the other.

The Youngs said that cooperation among the counties would be beneficial to their family because they have been shuttling between Riverside and Orange counties since they were evicted from their Corona apartment in June.

Restricted to two-week stays on county campsites and in most motels, the Youngs began to fear that their children would never be allowed to enroll in school because of their lack of a permanent address. But shortly after moving into Featherly Park, they heard about Project HOPE, and, coincidentally, Robinson heard that there was a new family in residence with school-age children.

“Ann was literally looking for us at the same time we were looking for her,” said Doc Young, an unemployed truck driver who, ironically, said he was once a high school physics and algebra teacher in Massachusetts. “Ann is an incredible teacher. You can literally see tears in her eyes when children have done a good job.”

Project HOPE hit the road last December after nearly a year of planning, and since then Robinson has loaded her Chevrolet pickup each morning with boxes of books and supplies. She has been using whatever facilities are available--picnic sites, libraries, and even restaurants--to instruct the 31 youngsters in grades kindergarten through eight currently enrolled in the independent-study program.

In addition to being unable to carry around all of the materials needed for proper schooling, Robinson said the biggest problem has been that classes are at the mercy of the weather.

The mobile school will also be valuable because, with tables that can be used as makeshift desks and bookshelves lining the vehicle, students will feel more like they are in a real classroom, easing the transition back into regular schools, Robinson said.

Robinson has definitely had an impact on Sean and Shana Young. Shana said she prefers hunting tiny lizards to going to school but nevertheless looks forward to returning to an ordinary classroom. “But I still want my teacher,” she said.

And Sean, who sports a mane of shoulder-length blond hair, said he diligently does his homework assignments because he fears that Robinson will spend less time with him if he doesn’t.

“When I don’t do my homework, I get freaked out,” he said.