Manatee County (FL) is suffering from a lack of affordable housing, and as familes lose jobs and homes, their children fall behind in their educational progress:
Families who find themselves on the street because of job layoffs or home foreclosures struggle to provide food, clothing and a roof over their heads, said Deborah Bailey, a social worker for Project HEART – the Homeless Education and Resource Team under the umbrella of the Manatee County school board.
In early February, the agency reported 635 children in the county without permanent shelter. That number is expected to rise to an estimated 1,300 by the end of the school year as the count continues, said Bailey…
The unstable environment of that “housing crisis” of homelessness also interferes with a child’s ability to learn, says Adell Erozer, executive director of the Community Coalition on Homelessness in Bradenton.
The achievement gap is evident in the standardized test scores of area homeless elementary- and middle-school students, Bailey said. For example, nearly each grade level between third and eighth grade had either 50 percent or fewer of its homeless students accomplishing learning gains in 2006, she said.
The local Salvation Army has room for only nine families.
0 Response to “A devastating problem”