Homeless students falling through the cracks at NYC schools, Comptroller’s report says

March 16, 2018 By Mary Frost Brooklyn Daily Eagle

NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer. File photo by Mary Frost

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According to an audit released by NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer on Thursday, thousands of homeless students may be falling through the cracks at public schools.

Under DOE regulations, schools are supposed to notify parents within 24 hours when a student is absent from class.

But records show that DOE missed that mark in 92 percent of the homeless cases, and never notified parents at all 75 percent of the time.

“These are heartbreaking government failures, because they affect young, vulnerable children,” Stringer said in a statement. “Schools are like second homes to so many families across the five boroughs, but for homeless children, the classroom is sometimes their only source of stability.”

Regulations call for schools to maintain a system for recognizing patterns of student absences, follow up, and intervene. DOE specifies that “every effort must be made to telephone parents on the first day of a student’s absence.” Most of the time, however, this does not happen, according to the comptroller’s audit.

Large Numbers of Homeless Kids ‘Chronically Absent’ from School

According to the non-profit Advocates for Children of New York (AFC), in 2016-2017 a record 104,088 New York City students were identified as homeless, a 50 percent increase from five years ago. Roughly 33,000 of these children reside in city shelters. Roughly 19,000 – or 58 percent – were chronically absent from school in 2015-2016.

Stringer’s audit focused on the school records of 73 students that DOE identified as residing in homeless shelters who were chronically absent during the 2015-2016 school year. The 73 students were absent an average of 42 days during the 178-day school year — a quarter of the time — and in most of these cases, the parents were never notified.

Of these 73 students, 31 attended school in Brooklyn.

The audit provided some sad examples of children in educational free fall.

For example, one homeless first grader attended two different schools during the 2015-2016 school year. The child was absent on 55 of the 178 school days (30 percent of the time), and was late on 101 separate occasions. The first school, after the fifth day of absence, merely sent a letter to the student’s parent stating that the student had been chronically absent during the prior school year. The second school waited six months before meeting with the student’s parents to discuss the attendance issues.

Recommendations

The Comptroller’s Office made roughly a dozen recommendations, including enhancing policies and procedures, familiarizing staffers with their responsibilities, ensuring that students’ absence histories are recognized within the Automate the Schools (ATS) system and, if needed, increasing the number of Family Assistants overseeing the shelters.

DOE told the comptroller it agreed with four of the recommendations and partially agreed with another four, but said that these eight recommendations were already current practice. DOE also told the comptroller it disagreed with a number of the audit findings.

The Brooklyn Eagle has reached out to DOE for a response but did not hear back by press time. Check brooklyneagle.com for updates.

According to AFC, for the past two years the de Blasio Administration included $10.3 million in the budget to support students who are homeless, including funding for 43 DOE “Bridging the Gap” social workers to work with students living in shelters.

The mayor’s recent budget proposal did not include any funding to continue these initiatives, however. The mayor told AFC that he was “still determining what type of support to include for these students in the 2019 budget.”

AFC and Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York are urging the Mayor to:

* Establish a Deputy Chancellor’s Office for what they call Highly Mobile Students (including students in temporary housing and students in foster care)

* Hire Field Support Center Directors for Highly Mobile Students

* Increase the number of DOE Bridging the Gap school-based social workers for students in shelters from 43 social workers to 100

* Hire 50 DOE social workers to provide intensive supports at shelters to address education-related issues