Thinking Citizen Blog — “Boston Public Schools Homelessness Hits All Time High” (Boston Globe)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day
Today’s Topic: “Boston Public Schools Homelessness Hits All Time High” (Boston Globe)
More than 5,000 students in the Boston Public Schools “have experienced homelessness at some point this school year.” This is an all-time high and represents about 10% of the student population. “
Today excerpts from an article in the Boston Globe addressing the issue of why things have gotten this bad.’’
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“A PERFECT STORM” — Brandy Brooks, head of the nonprofit “Higher Ground” (Below some historical, national data. Does anyone have more recent data?)
- ”Rents have hit record prices, higher than most places in the country.”
2. “The eviction moratorium in place during the height of the pandemic has expired, pushing out many had fallen behind on rent.”
3. “An influx of migrants, many of them unaccompanied young people who have also entered the school system, have filled the state’s emergency shelters.”
NB: “And until additional federal funds are allocated, the Boston Housing Authority has no more federal housing subsidies, known as Section 8 vouchers, available — just as district efforts to finnel them to homeless families were beginning to bear fruit.”
“IN MOST GRADES AND SUBJECTS, HOMELESS BPS STUDENTS MEET GRADE-LEVEL EXPECTATIONS ON THE STATE MCAS EXAM AT HALF THE RATE OF THEIR PEERS”
1. “About one-third fail to graduate on time; some of those students go on to graduate after five or more years, but may drop out. Statewide, the gaps are even more extreme.”
2. “One partnership, the Early Homelessness Intervention Program with Family Aid Boston, focuses on preventing families from becoming homeless by connecting them with organizations that can provide financial,, legal, or even health assistance, among other services, and has helped over 900 families since 2022…”
3. “But the district’s biggest success has been helping to house over 1,600 families since 2021…The Boston Housing Authority has an agreement with the district to issue available housing vouchers to BPS families, while the district and partners like Family Aid Boston help families search for housing and can provide money to help pay for brokers’ fees and security deposits. The district has also used city-funded vouchers to house some families and is partnering with the Housing Authority to get families access to public housing units.”
THE STORY OF JAYLENE MACEDO, AGE 6
1. “The paint on the walls was dirty and peeling and the windows looked out onto Blue Hill Avenue, filling the room with sounds of fights on the streets, vehicles whizzing past, and people talking and yelling.”
2. “Jaylene Macedo, then 6, couldn’t focus amid the chaos. The first-grader shared one cramped room with two beds in the Roxbury homeless shelter with her mom, Natalia Macedo, and younger sister, Ava.”
3. “She didn’t feel safe, often climbing into her mother’s bed until she fell asleep. For months, she kept asking her mother, “When are we hoeing to have our own house?” or “When do I get my room back?”
FOOTNOTE — A LITTLE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON BOSTON’S SCHOOL-AGED POPULATION (see second link below for details)
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/06/17/metro/bps-student-homelessness-boston-public-schools/
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IP5ATbqCWPv0WKC4dCDgAiidbFVOaqR_
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.
