Schooling Kids in Transition : Interfaith Shelter Program Offers Permanence for Students With No Stable Home

Susan Rosa went to three schools in Costa Mesa last week to enroll her two young sons, but all three turned them away.

Exasperated and feeling defeated, she returned to her family’s home, a motel on Harbor Boulevard. It was there one afternoon last week that she met Lori Glover and Vanessa Ontiveros, administrators at the nearby Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter. They were looking for people just like the Rosas--families with no permanent home.

With a pickup truck and an armful of bright green fliers at their disposal, Glover and Ontiveros were visiting about a dozen motels, soup kitchens and community centers that day to spread the word about Transitions, a fledgling one-room school for homeless children that will open this week for its first full academic year.

Rosa, waiting for husband Louis to return from his building maintenance job in Santa Ana, listened intently as Glover explained the program to the motel’s manager. Then, cautiously, she asked the women if she had heard them correctly.

“I’ve been trying to get my kids in school, and no one will take them,” Rosa told them.

Glover had heard this story before. School districts often turn away families with no permanent address because there is no way to prove that the children belong in their district. In Rosa’s case, none of the schools she had visited thought the motel was within their boundaries.

Glover explained that there is no cost to attend Transitions, and a permanent address is not required. Students can receive breakfast and lunch there, donated school supplies and all the necessary immunizations, Glover said. Transitions is staffed by a fully accredited teacher. And after school, students can attend the Boys & Girls Club until 5:30 p.m.

Rosa’s oldest son, 9-year-old Louis Jr., brightened upon hearing that school would start Thursday.

“I’ve been from one school to the next today, and no one will take them,” Rosa said. “They’ve got to get educated.”

The Rosas have followed Louis Sr.’s job from New Jersey to Texas and Virginia, finally ending up in Anaheim last year. But when an expected job in Seattle fell through recently, they found themselves with no place to live. Lately, the children have been tutored by their father.

Housed in a sun-filled former arts-and-crafts building on the Rea Elementary campus, Transitions is run in conjunction with the Interfaith Shelter and the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. The school first opened in April and then ran a summer school session. Attendance varies from day to day, but the program has attracted as many as a dozen students at a time, said Mike Murphy, Newport-Mesa’s director of alternative programs and student services. Students can attend no matter where they are staying.

Transitions’ budget, about $60,000 this year, will come from CalWorks, the state and federal welfare-to-work program. While the children are in school, parents can look for housing or work, Murphy said, or attend counseling or job training sessions.

“We thought if we could free those parents up of their worry [about their children], they could be emotionally ready to go out and look for housing and jobs,” Murphy said. “From the stories we were getting . . . the kids are sitting in the back of Mom and Dad’s car while their parents wait in line” for a welfare check or look for a job.

Murphy said the program also works with parents “to get them to value their children’s education and make that a high priority, whether they’re living in a car or a park or a homeless shelter.”

Interfaith Shelter officials estimate that between 12,000 and 15,000 homeless people live in Orange County, about 4,000 of them children. While another school, Project Hope in Orange, serves families in North County, Transitions is the first school for homeless children in its area.

Transitions draws most of its children from the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter’s emergency program, which provides couples, single women and families with shelter for up to seven days at a time. Most children attend Transitions for only a few days at a time. But even if their families leave the shelter, children can continue to attend the school until they are settled someplace permanent.

Families staying in the shelter’s 90- to 120-day temporary program are encouraged to enroll their children in the regular neighborhood schools. There, too, Glover meets with their teachers and monitors the progress of her young charges.

The shelter has room for as many as 18 families in its temporary program. The emergency program can serve as many as 55 people a night.

Providing stability for children at a time when nearly everything else in their lives is unsettled is a main focus of the school, said Glover, the shelter’s children’s program coordinator.

“We want to keep them in the school and hooked up with all of our resources until they have their own place to live,” Glover said.

Glover works closely with Transitions teacher Laurel Jacobs to monitor the students’ needs. And Ontiveros, who is the emergency program manager, works with parents to help them find permanent housing solutions and work.

Like the shelter, the school relies on donations for many of its everyday supplies. A recent school supplies drive at a church in Huntington Beach netted dozens of bags full of backpacks, notebooks, paper and art supplies.

To 8-year-old Jesus, who is living at the shelter with his mother, the colorful supplies are an enticing reminder that a new school year is just around the corner. Jesus, whose last name is being withheld to protect his privacy, attended summer school at Transitions and said he is eager to see his teacher, Miss Jacobs, when he begins third grade this week.

“She’s very nice. She likes the way I behave,” Jesus said.

Jesus likes his school, especially the math lessons, but said he hopes that there will be more kids for him to play with when he returns this year.

Glover and Ontiveros say they hope so too. Their spread-the-word campaign seems to have netted at least two new families so far.

A woman who had seen the flier at a motel picked up a registration packet at the shelter last week, Ontiveros said.

And Susan Rosa said she would definitely enroll her two boys in the program. “I’m happy that finally we found somewhere to put them to school,” she said. “Our kids’ education is No. 1 in our lives, and they really want to go.”

For more information about the Transitions school, call Lori Glover at (949) 631-7213.

* SCHOOL SAFETY

O.C. educators are taking moderate, not extreme, precautions. B2