A record 154,000 public school students were homeless during the last school year, according to a new report by nonprofit Advocates for Children of New York.
The nonprofit organization said this is the 10th consecutive year where more than 100,000 students did not have a permanent place to call home.
If the homeless students had their own school district, it would be one of the 20 largest educational systems in the country.
Nearly all the homeless students sleep in shelters or overcrowded apartments with other families.
“What the worrying part is for me, just making sure that she gets the proper education, for one. Equality is another, for two,” said the mother of a displaced first-grader.
The mother, who did not want to be identified, has a 6-year-old with special needs.
“It’s a lot of obstacles that I have to overcome,” she said.
Jennifer Pringle, the project director for Advocates for Children, put the number into perspective.
“There are now more students who are homeless in NYC than the entire Dallas public school system,” Pringle said.
In neighborhoods like East Harlem, Highbridge and Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and Brownsville and Bushwick in Brooklyn, more than one in five students experienced homelessness last year — which is linked to more missed school days, poorer performance and a cycle sentencing more young adults to homelessness.
“It did take me 15 days with my daughter not being in school to navigate the system,” the mother said.
Advocates say city agencies need to work together to maintain consistency as families move.
“It can’t just be New York City public schools, they do not control where families are placed in shelter, we need all the city agencies at the table,” Pringle said. “Placing more families closer to where the kids go to school.”
Eyewitness News reached out to the city’s Board of Education which outlined all the support for displaced students, saying, “Education is key to breaking the cycle of homelessness and we’ll continue to strengthen our trauma-informed, cross-agency, data-driven strategies to help students.”
The mother who spoke with Eyewitness News also mentioned better cross-agency communication would be helpful.
As for what is driving the increased homelessness among schoolchildren, advocates say it’s the lack of affordable housing and families fleeing domestic violence.
Click here for the report.
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