Dozens of Sammamish Children Homeless This Year

Editor’s note: This is a special report about homeless students in the Lake Washington and Issaquah school districts. Patch partnered with InvestigateWest for this report.

School districts around the state are grappling with how to help growing populations of homeless students, even as budget cuts further slash their ability to meet their federal obligation to do so.

Tough economic times haven’t bypassed the Sammamish community, where dozens of children were counted as homeless this school year.

In the , officials identified 177 students as homeless, a 49 percent increase from 119 in 2009-10, and nearly four times the numbers counted in 2006-07.

Among the district campuses that make up the  community in Sammamish, the district has identified 12 homeless students in this academic year and the previous one. In the , there were 29 homeless students from Sammamish this year, with 10 attending . That number includes Beaver Lake Middle School, which is in Issaquah but on the Sammamish border.

In the 2009-10 school year, there were 20 homeless students from Sammamish in the Issaquah School District, officials said. Overall, during this academic year, the Issaquah School District had 135 homeless students, up from 95 in 2009-10.

The struggling economy is a factor in the increasing number of homeless students, said Cheryl Chikalla, Lake Washington School District program specialist who helps homeless students and coordinates their transportation needs. “We’re also proactive in identifying families,” she said.

“We’re seeing people who thought they’d never be homeless,” she said, adding that she was uncertain why there were only 12 homeless students identified in the Eastlake High School community.

Providing stability

Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, school districts are required to identify and report homeless students and to guarantee those students transportation so they can stay at their original schools even if they have been forced to find emergency shelter outside the district. The districts are required to track how many students are living in motels, doubled up with relatives, in cars or in shelters.

Being homeless can affect how children learn, can lead to depression, and can be misdiagnosed as learning disabilities, labels that stick with a child for years (See related story). Chikalla pointed out that each time a student moves to a new place unexpectedly, there is the possibility of losing what has been learned in the classroom–sometimes up to six months of education.

“We try and keep them as stable as possible,” she said.

“The main goal of identifying kids is so they can stay in their school of origin, so they have consistency with their peers, teachers and educational progress,” said Melinda Dyer, program supervisor for Education of Homeless Children and Youth for the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

That means providing cabs, bus passes, or other means of transportation for kids, even if it means they are commuting up to an hour and a half a day to school.

It’s up to individual school districts to squeeze that transportation money from their own budgets. “There is no pot of money for homeless students,” said Dyer. “It’s a big burden for districts.”

Dennis Wright, director of career and counseling services with the Issaquah School District, noted that officials need to consider the age of a homeless child and the type of transportation that is used to take the student to and from a temporary home and school.

For example, he said, the idea of putting a young child in a taxi alone might not be the safest method.

Issaquah School District officials also said that the number of homeless students that they help goes up and down each year - and that they do not track the specific economic reason that led to a young person losing a permanent home.

Some homeless high school students, officials said, might just be living with someone else. Or families seeking shelter might live in the district for a period.

For others, though, there is the need for districts to provide transportation.

Jeff Miles, LWSD transportation manager, said the district spent about $346,000 during the 2008-09 school year getting homeless kids to and from their original schools and $314,000 in the 2009-10 school year. Those numbers represent just the cost of transporting students to and from outside the district.

For this school year, through February the district had spent $123,000, “so we’re on track for another $300,000-plus year.”

The rationale for keeping kids in their original school is that it helps their learning.

A small 2006 pilot study by the Washington state Department of Transportation found that while homeless kids typically had lower grades and Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) scores than non-homeless students, the grades and scores were better among those homeless students who got to stay in their original schools.

‘Wish we could do more’

A report released in December shows 21,826 homeless students statewide in the 2009-2010 school year, a 30 percent increase in three years. That reporting period compares the numbers of homeless students reported in the 2006-2007 school year, before the recession began in December of 2007, to the most current full year, 2009-2010.

Of the 10 districts with the highest numbers of homeless students in the state, eight reported increases from 2006-07 to 2009-10. Bellingham, for example, was up 80 percent, Tacoma up 17 percent, Seattle up 27 percent and Highline up 21 percent.

That reflects a national trend, driven largely by the fallout of the grim economy. Families are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. They now account for 40 percent of the homeless population, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. And most of those families have children, many of them school-age.

Dyer said some of the increase was also due to increased awareness of the reporting requirements. At the same time, she said the numbers underestimate the size of the problem because many families go out of their way to hide their homelessness for fear of being stigmatized.

Once identified, homeless students may need help other than transportation as well. Some need help with basics, such as clothing or tutoring.

Chikalla said she is thinking about contacting community groups to ask whether they have resources, such as food or school supplies, to help homeless students in the LWSD.

“We always wish we could do more,” she said.

-- This story includes reporting from Greg Johnston, editor of Kirkland Patch.