Looking for Stats on the Impact of Homeless Students within LI Districts (Buffalo: rent, how much)

[OhBeeHave]

Would someone be able to point me in the right direction, please? I am looking for info on the impact of homeless students within LI school districts. I've Googled and found info for other states, but really want to be LI specific for what I need.

I've tried NYS Board of Regents Homeless Children -- but it isn't taking me where I need to go.

Stats concerning behavioral problems, incidents in school requiring state reporting, grades, increased costs to schools (i.e. aides, psychiatrists, busing) the impact of a transient population on the student body...anything is helpful, good or bad.

Thanks in advance

[SilverBulletZ06]

Originally Posted by OhBeeHave

Would someone be able to point me in the right direction, please? I am looking for info on the impact of homeless students within LI school districts. I've Googled and found info for other states, but really want to be LI specific for what I need.

I've tried NYS Board of Regents Homeless Children -- but it isn't taking me where I need to go.

Stats concerning behavioral problems, incidents in school requiring state reporting, grades, increased costs to schools (i.e. aides, psychiatrists, busing) the impact of a transient population on the student body...anything is helpful, good or bad.

Thanks in advance

Well they would increase costs because of the lack of property tax paid, but since funding is via enrollement it really doesn't make too much of a difference.

As for the other stuff, harder to discuss.

[OhBeeHave]

Thanks, Silverbullet. I'm in need of cold, hard numbers.

[SilverBulletZ06]

Originally Posted by OhBeeHave

Thanks, Silverbullet. I'm in need of cold, hard numbers.

Best of luck. Try calling the NY BoE or even individual districts.

[OhBeeHave]

Thanks again. Looks like that is what I will be doing.

[BuffaloTransplant]

I taught in an urban district where it was not uncommon for kids to live in 3-4 homes a year. You pay rent 2 mos, you get evicted; move in with family; move again, pay rent 3 mos and leave; move a 4th time. The families had beds, lamps, tvs and kitchen utensils -- tie it on the car or truck and move in the middle of the night. No joke ( taught 30 years -- the last 20 or so were like that).

The kids were out of sync with the curriculum, many failed ( you could only fail once between K-6 and once in 7-8, so they knew it was a free ride, grade to grade). I started in the early 1970s and we had 1 itinerant teacher per school for maybe half a day to deal with kids ; I ended and you had 2 guidance counselors (1 Special ed), a reading teacher, a math teacher, a speech teacher, several special ed teachers ( classes and pullouts) and often OT and PT. We didn't get kids with that many more kids; the system failed the kids. "Least restrictive environment" (special kids in regular classes -- so bright kids still passed and specials got lots of help and average got left by the wayside) was, IMHO, terrible to the average kids.

We didn't have lots of shelter kids ( except domestic violence); we had poor kids whose family chose to move around to beat the cost of living in one place.

Doesn't matter where it is: it messes with the kids -- ALL the kids in the school -- the more dysfunctional families you have.

[flowergarden]

I think there are no numbers. The numbers you are looking for are very specific and I'm not sure how you would design controls for that kind of study. Someone would have to look at number of incidences per school district and then determine whether it was a "homeless" or "shelter" child or if it was a "poor" child or if it was a "middle class" child for each incidence. That study would determine the differences in housing or economics on the children in each economic situation. It would not show how that one study group effected the other kids in the other groups (homeless, poor, middle class). So, I think from an analytical perspective, it's an impossible "study". How would you determine that the rates of incidences in study group 3 (middles class kids) were effected by the kids in study group 1 (homeless kids) and not a plethora of other reasons unrelated to the presence or absence of homeless kids in the school. I think you can find many studies showing a relationship between poverty and low school performance and maybe even behavioral incidences in schools. But the impact of transient populations on the non transient population would be a very specific study. Maybe call the education department at Stony Brook Univ and see if there is a PhD study out there somewhere.

[twingles]

I think it's very hard to track too for the simple fact that these kids do move so much. I remember years back there was a story in Newsday about a kid in HUntington whose family was homeless. Prior to this he had been at Huntington HS. His family was placed in a hotel in HUntington but in the Walt Whitman district. But he still went to HHS and had to walk there every day. No bus. The upshot of this story was that he went on to Princeton on a full scholarship.

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by flowergarden

I think there are no numbers. The numbers you are looking for are very specific and I'm not sure how you would design controls for that kind of study. Someone would have to look at number of incidences per school district and then determine whether it was a "homeless" or "shelter" child or if it was a "poor" child or if it was a "middle class" child for each incidence. That study would determine the differences in housing or economics on the children in each economic situation. It would not show how that one study group effected the other kids in the other groups (homeless, poor, middle class). So, I think from an analytical perspective, it's an impossible "study". How would you determine that the rates of incidences in study group 3 (middles class kids) were effected by the kids in study group 1 (homeless kids) and not a plethora of other reasons unrelated to the presence or absence of homeless kids in the school. I think you can find many studies showing a relationship between poverty and low school performance and maybe even behavioral incidences in schools. But the impact of transient populations on the non transient population would be a very specific study. Maybe call the education department at Stony Brook Univ and see if there is a PhD study out there somewhere.

Thank you for your insight. What I was finding didn't break out the groups as you've indicated.

I've found NYS incident reports and groups were not identified. Standardized testing scores are district wide, with some broken out by race or disability but no transient or non transient indicators.

Onto SBU!

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by BuffaloTransplant

I taught in an urban district where it was not uncommon for kids to live in 3-4 homes a year. You pay rent 2 mos, you get evicted; move in with family; move again, pay rent 3 mos and leave; move a 4th time. The families had beds, lamps, tvs and kitchen utensils -- tie it on the car or truck and move in the middle of the night. No joke ( taught 30 years -- the last 20 or so were like that).

The kids were out of sync with the curriculum, many failed ( you could only fail once between K-6 and once in 7-8, so they knew it was a free ride, grade to grade). I started in the early 1970s and we had 1 itinerant teacher per school for maybe half a day to deal with kids ; I ended and you had 2 guidance counselors (1 Special ed), a reading teacher, a math teacher, a speech teacher, several special ed teachers ( classes and pullouts) and often OT and PT. We didn't get kids with that many more kids; the system failed the kids. "Least restrictive environment" (special kids in regular classes -- so bright kids still passed and specials got lots of help and average got left by the wayside) was, IMHO, terrible to the average kids.

We didn't have lots of shelter kids ( except domestic violence); we had poor kids whose family chose to move around to beat the cost of living in one place.

Doesn't matter where it is: it messes with the kids -- ALL the kids in the school -- the more dysfunctional families you have.

One of the things I am trying to look at is the overall cost to the district when a group of homeless shelter students is brought in (when there previously was no shelter), adding their unique problems to the problems the resident students already have -- as you've mentioned dysfunctional families, divorced parents, substance abuse, etc.

You've mentioned your experience and how staffing grew exponentially over the course of your career. Given the high taxes many school districts are burdened by, how much more would transient students cost resident taxpayers in terms of additional staffing, reporting to the state, busing, etc.? These are amongst the items I am attempting to obtain.