Homelessness is a very real, very present aspect of life in Española, so much so that it has become a fixture of sorts, part of the general scenery of the daily commute and therefore, easily dismissed.
When thinking of homelessness, the vision includes panhandlers outside a store asking for change, or people posted at intersections or on-ramps, holding signs, requesting any kind of charity that passersby can muster.
Now, think about “homelessness” as part of the fabric of the Española School District, in freshman English, on field trips or running the game-winning touchdown.
The sobering fact is that homeless students are a real and often forgotten demographic, which is why the McKinney-Vento Act is so important.
McKinney Vento was strengthened when President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law on Dec. 10, 2015, which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The purpose of strengthening the Act and reauthorizing Every Student Succeeds was to integrate best practices nationwide to increase the identification, enrollment, stability and school success of children and youth experiencing homelessness, according to the New Mexico Public Education Department’s website.
In the District, Executive Director of Student Services and Wellness Deirdra Montoya and Assistant Director and McKinney-Vento Coordinator Anna Vargas Gutierrez, are leading the charge in identifying and providing services to students that are deemed homeless under the act.
While the aesthetic of someone that is homeless is a very real and present aspect of daily life, the identification of a homeless student is a very different designation altogether, according to the language of the Act.
To qualify for assistance from McKinney-Vento, children must lack a fixed, regular or adequate nighttime residence. Vague to be sure, but the act does specify particulars that shed more light on the definition of a homeless student. The term homeless includes a child that is, according to the Department’s website:
•Doubled-Up. Doubled up refers to a child that is sharing housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardships or similar reasons.
•Living in a motel, hotel, RV park or camping rounds due to a lack of alternative adequate accommodations.
•Living in emergency or transitional shelters.
•Abandoned in a hospital.
•Reside in a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.
•Living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations or similar settings.
•Migratory children who qualify as homeless because they are living in similar circumstances described above.
To further clarify, the tenets of receiving support are if, due to a loss of housing, a child lives in a shelter, motel, vehicle, campground, on the street, in abandoned buildings or doubled up with relatives or friends, then they are eligible to receive services provided under the Mckinney Vento Act.
The District used the definitions and outlines of the Act to identify homeless students in the District.
“I can tell you that in the 2017-2018 school year, that we identified 60 students that qualified as homeless,” Montoya said. “We are still under identified. We know we still have more students to identify.”
Despite these high numbers, Montoya and Vargas Gutierrez believe that the actual number of homeless students are closer to 180.
“According to statistics from the (New Mexico Public Education Department) and based on our poverty area in Rio Arriba, we are probably closer to 180 students that qualify, but are unidentified.” Vargas Gutierrez said.
Identification remains a major issue in the District’s ability to identify students that are in need of services provided through the funding of the Act, but that funding is not a hefty sum.
This year, through a grant received through the Act and Title I federal funds allocated to assist local educational agencies and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards, the District only has $25,000 to fully train its six McKinney Vento liaisons to set procedures for identifying qualifying families and students as well as provide vital necessities to students such as school supplies, toiletries and clothing, Montoya said.
“The Vento money is small, but it is a start to help us in supporting our students,” she said. “One of the biggest issues is identification. Some people are embarrassed to identify as needing help, but we have also had people that are desperate to receive aid.”
A majority of District students that qualify for services are not living under bridges, in parks, in abandoned buildings or in cars, but are under the care of grandparents, friends or are crammed into substandard housing situations in which there is not enough space or lack what is deemed to be adequate utility services.
“We do have homeless students in Española, but they aren’t unsheltered, they are just in non-traditional living situations or inadequate situations,” Vargas Gutierrez said. “I have families that are just crowded, in terms of the amount of people in a space and we have certain families that don’t have all of the utilities. We also have a lot of grandparents raising kids, because their parents aren’t involved, the parents could be in rehab, in jail or deceased, there are so many reasons that grandparents are raising kids.”
While the prognosis may seem grim or even insurmountable in terms of funding and identification of at risk students, what has truly impressed Montoya and Gutierrez is how the Española community and local organizations have rallied around their efforts and the needs of students.
“One thing that we have learned is that the community (Española) is very accommodating,” Montoya said. “We don’t have kids sleeping along the arroyos, families take them in. they aren’t unsheltered, Española takes care of its people. I think that is a huge compliment to the community.”
Zia Credit Union has donated extra money for toiletries, socks and underwear. The North Central Solid Waste Authority has donated school supplies and other materials to aid Vargas Gutierrez and Montoya in gathering supplies and necessities for students, the employees of the Los Alamos National Laboratory donated 190 backpacks filled with school supplies, which benefited students District wide, but homeless especially. Many of these charitable donations came through Vargas Gutierrez reaching out to these organizations, who, Montoya said, jumped at the chance to aid the District’s students.
Montoya and Vargas Gutierrez’s will continue their efforts during the 2018-2019 school year and the program will evolve as they further advance the District’s ability to identify and serve its homeless student population through community involvement and grant funding.
“We are training people with this grant, we are able to have more support, more help, more people training and more people understanding what we can do, and what we should be doing,” Montoya said. “We are training six people within the District, so every school has a McKinney Vento liaison.”