HOUSTON — Michelle Davis opened the trunk of her black Mercury Mountaineer, placing inside plastic bags full of jeans, a blue-and-white striped Polo and other clothes.
A youth services worker with the Spring School District bought the clothes for Dewayne, Davis’ son who attends Westfield High School. He’s one of nine children and grandchildren, ages 3 to 18, who have been living with her, supported largely by food stamps and a disability check for Dwayne, who has suffered seizures and a brain injury. “I’ll take anything,” said Davis, 51, of the much-needed help.
Her children are among more than 3 million students in Texas public schools who are economically disadvantaged. Six out of 10 public school students in Texas live in or nearly in poverty, according to a recently released report from the Southern Education Foundation. It also found that, for the first time, more than half of the nation’s public school students were from low-income families.
While the Houston Independent School District’s population of economically disadvantaged students has been at roughly 80 percent for more than a decade, suburban districts are also experiencing large jumps that they’re struggling to handle. In Spring ISD, the share increased from roughly 44 percent to more than 73 percent. The percentages in the Katy and Cypress-Fairbanks districts have doubled, to about 30 percent and 50 percent, respectively. The numbers went up in Conroe ISD to roughly 36 percent, and in Fort Bend ISD to 39 percent.
Over the past decade, the Houston area added some 190,000 public school students qualifying for the federal program that provides free and reduced-cost lunches, a common barometer of school poverty. “We’re seeing this huge growth in economically disadvantaged students and we're not making any kind of adjustments for concentrations of poverty,” said Chandra Villanueva, an analyst with the Center for Public Policy Priorities.
Though some have tied the increases to the recent recession, many agree it’s a statewide trend with deeper roots that will require a comprehensive approach. While education advocates and local officials lobby for increased state funding, districts are trying to help poor students by adding more social workers, expanding free lunch and breakfast programs, and offering early childhood and summer learning opportunities, among other programs.
The shift comes as state and federal leaders increasingly focus on the plight of poor students. The Obama administration has called for providing $1 billion more a year to schools with low-income students and for boosting pre-kindergarten, which many low-income students have limited access to, but it faces resistance from the Republican-controlled Congress.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a speech Friday that low-income students in many states are “shortchanged” because their districts receive less money.
In their inaugural addresses, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick talked about the need for career-ready instruction and school choice as ways for students from low-income families to compete with wealthier students who can pay for private schools.
Like other education advocates, Villanueva is urging the state legislature to modify its education funding formula to give extra weight for students considered economically disadvantaged, as well as for English language learners.
“Economically disadvantaged students historically cost more to educate than their more affluent counterparts,” she told the Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/1Fq3L6L ). “They don’t have a lot of those external educational opportunities that more affluent families are able to take advantage of.”
They don’t have access to a lot more than just educational opportunities. Davis wasn’t only receiving clothes for Dewayne on this recent Friday.
Kristie Erwin, the Spring ISD community youth services worker, carried over a cardboard box filled with canned tomatoes and beans and a box of Frosted Flakes and Colossal Crunch cereal.
Davis had also enlisted the district’s help to buy plates and silverware and hopefully, soon, a car seat for her grandson. “You've been helping me so much,” Davis said,
“We need to get you guys stable,” Erwin replied.
Stability has been hard to come by recently for Davis and her family. In October, the owner of the house where Davis had been staying for a year told her he’d be selling the place. Davis couldn’t afford to buy it, so her family moved out. For months Davis and her troupe of nine stayed with relatives, and at times in the back of her Mountaineer.
The experience caused her kids to act out in school, Davis said. Some got into fights. Others talked back to teachers. One tried to run away. Today, Davis and five of her kids live in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Eastex; the rest are at another family member’s place. “Me and Jojo sleep in one room,” Davis said, pointing at a bed where her 3-year-old grandson was sprawled, asleep, on top of a red bedspread.
Then she pointed to the other room, where four boys, including Dewayne, slept on a queen bed together. Space is scarce; their clothes are stuffed in plastic laundry baskets on top of a low, wooden chest of drawers.
To meet the needs of students like Dewayne, school districts have turned to expanded meal offerings that stretch into the mornings and evenings as well as the summers, targeted early childhood education efforts and added more social workers to help families navigate a web of resources in response to the fast-changing demographics.
“It is extremely difficult for students to learn while they are hungry,” said Karen Garrison, a spokeswoman for the Spring ISD.
She said the district offers free lunch and breakfast to students who qualify, as well as a dinner program at 27 schools for those 18 and younger. The district also offers a summer meals program at certain schools. Homeless students are fed, transported and provided funds for clothes. In addition, the district has counselors who work with at-risk students, and specialists who provide support at middle and high schools and who assist teachers with instructional approaches. Social workers provide support at all 37 schools.
To get more low-income and first-time students to college, Houston Endowment Inc. recently awarded Houston ISD an $8.5 million grant to hire more counselors.
But even new programs not necessarily designed for low-income students, like a seven-week summer literacy camp at nine Cypress-Fairbanks campuses, have the added benefit of addressing some of those gaps in educational opportunities faced by poor students. “It was fun. I got to see some of my friends, I got to learn, I got to read,” said Laurent Ngare, a third-grader at Danish Elementary and one of thousands of students who attended the summer literacy camp.
Started last summer, the camp targeted students in kindergarten and first and second grades who were reading below grade level. Along with breakfast, lunch and transportation, the program offered focused literacy curriculum.
“If we don’t get them interested in reading now, it’s really hard,” said Kimberley Criswell, assistant principal at Danish Elementary, who served as the summer camp principal. “People tend to drop out if they’re not successful at reading,” she explained. And though the dreaded summer slump is often compounded by the challenges of living in poverty, Criswell said the sort of literacy work offered over the summer is just good teaching. “It will work for all kids,” Criswell said.
And it did. She said her students returned to school that fall more confident, most on or above reading level, whereas before they struggled. “We didn't see regression,” she said, “and that was such a benefit.”
Anything that helps students stay engaged is key, especially for students struggling with poverty at home. Advocates worry that as that population increases, more students could fall through the cracks. “We have some of the lowest college graduation rates in the country and some of the highest rates of people without a high school degree,” said Villanueva, who is also pushing the Legislature to restore funding for programs that specifically target low-income students in addition to increasing the basic allotment for all districts. “It’s kind of this compounding factor,” she added. “We’re just not putting enough into our basic building block, and then we’re not increasing it enough to deal with the challenges we’re seeing with the growth of economically disadvantaged students.”
(AP, in collaboration with the Houston Chronicle)
