Education Week - June 19, 2019 - 9

Fending Off Dread of Summer Break for Homeless Students
Camps fill gap with
academic supports

But the rising 5th grader later
confided, "I like the activities best
here. I just like it to be a surprise."
He and his brother have been attending camp since last year, and
they have an older brother who also
attended until he aged out in middle
school.
The lessons follow next-generation science standards and common-core math and reading standards, but are designed entirely in
games and art projects. The science
projects and experiments come
from a grant from GSK Science in
the Summer, which provides support and curriculums to community groups that serve high-risk
students.
"These children don't get a lot of
opportunities and they are such a
pleasure to teach," said Heather
Kleiner, SciPort's director of the
GSK Science summer program.

By Sarah D. Sparks
Bossier City, La.

While many students eagerly
count down the last few days of the
school year, the start of summer
break is a more anxious prospect
for students in and on the verge of
homelessness.
"Letting these kids go in the
summer, which sounds great, is
for many homeless kids the worst
time in their life," said Ralph da
Costa Nunez, the president of the
Institute for Children, Poverty, and
Homelessness.
That's why programs like the
Bossier Schools Summer Blast program here are working to help the
most vulnerable students keep the
academic and social supports they
enjoy while school is in session.
Nearly half of Bossier Parish's
23,000 students live in poverty and
400 are homeless. Blast Camp provides three full-day weeks for students in grades 2-5 who are homeless or in foster care. Campers get
free transportation, t-shirts, and
breakfast, lunch, and afternoon
snacks. Four days a week, they
have hands-on classes in reading,
math, science, and art with district
teachers and community groups.
On Fridays, the campers go on field
trips to local museums, nature centers, and the local emergency services center.
"Even though it's only three
weeks, it gives a student three
weeks of time to keep his brain
going and make sure he's not losing
all the skills he gained during the
school year," said Arcenia Anthony,
the homeless liaison for Bossier
Parish public schools, who directs
the camp.

FPO

Photos by Emily Kask for Education Week

Rising Need

Bracing for 'Summer Surge'
Families with school-age children
drive an annual "summer surge" in
homelessness, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
"Single homeless [people] are
moving all the time in the wintertime. Homeless families don't
move, because their kids are in
school," said da Costa Nunez. "No
matter where they are, they kind
of hole up ... and even though it's a
shelter or in adoubled-up environment, it creates a stable environment for kids. They know where
they're coming and going from
every day."
But relatives or friends who had
allowed families to live doubled up
to let their children attend school
often ask them to move out at the
end of the school year, experts
say. Many families end up on the
move.
Though programs like Bossier
City's are few and far between, da
Costa Nunez said, "If you are lucky
enough to get into a homeless camp,
that can be stabilizing for [homeless
students] because it keeps them
together. They know each other,

FROM TOP: Students learn how to
check their pulses and how they
change after exercising during
a summer camp program for
students who are homeless or in
foster care in Bossier City, La.
Michael Helverson studies a vial
of "blood" to see if it's healthy
during a summer program that
provides academic and social
supports for vulnerable students.

they're there for the summer and
it helps with the transition back to
school."
It also lightens the burden of finding summer child care, which can
significantly hit a family's budget
and interfere with parents' jobs, according to a study in the Journal of
Children and Poverty.
That's one reason Evelyn Benson said she was thrilled when her
daughter, 8-year-old Ayana, was invited to join the Blast camp last year.
"We don't have anything planned
in the summer because I work
graveyard shift. So there's not a
lot we can do, you know, other than
go to the little park ... no real big
learning experiences," Benson said.
"When they offered this, it was so
wonderful ... because we need some
backup during the summer to help
[Ayana] keep refreshed."

Academic Focus
On a recent day at the camp, Davion Perry and his brother Jayden
donned neon safety goggles to
learn about the digestive system.

They and about a dozen other
children tracked the length of a
stretched out model of a human intestine, then watched teacher Ken
Smith cram it all back into its actual space in a body while describing how they work.
"The milk you drink, that calcium
comes out in the small intestine.
Vitamins A, B, C, D, all those you
eat, they come out in the small intestine," explained Smith, an educator with SciPort Discovery Center,
a museum in nearby Shreveport
which partners with the camp for
both classes and field trips. "So, now
we've gotten you familiar with the
process, we're actually going see
how this process works."
Then it got messy.
In small teams, the campers simulated a full digestion. They ground
up cereal to represent teeth, then
churned it to mush in a "stomach"
bowl with water. Davion found it
gleefully gross.
"Ugh!" Davion said as he funneled
it into a length of pantyhose and
squeezed it to simulate nutrients
pulled by the intestine.

The need for summer programs
like these is becoming more urgent.
The number of homeless children
hit an all-time high this year, with
nearly 1.36 million children living
doubled up, in shelters, hotels, or on
the street.
These students are at higher risk
for both summer learning loss and
school disengagement than their
more securely housed classmates.
And under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states must track the
educational progress of their homeless students, highlighting how
well districts support them.
Yet the institute's da Costa
Nunez said the number of summer
camps for highly vulnerable children has shrunk in recent years,
with contracting state budgets and
federal McKinney-Vento funds for
homeless education. Sustainable
academic summer programs often
look like Bossier City's: a collaboration of city and district staff, as
well as foundations and community groups.
For example, another Science in
the Summer program holds twoday mini-camps at a county site
that offers meals to homeless, migrant, and poor students in Chapparal, N.M.
"We're like an on-site field
trip," said site director Stephanie
Hawkins. "We've seen it can make
a long-lasting impact on STEM engagement in the fall."
Emily Benson's daughter Ayana
returned to the Bossier City camp
this year.
On her first day she and her classmates started painting a 9-foot-long
mural of the solar system in art
class.
"She came home all excited and
started naming off all the planets,"
her mom said, "and you know, it's just
good to see your children just light up
because they learned something."
Coverage of afterschool learning
opportunities is supported in part by a
grant from the Charles Stewart Mott
Foundation, at www.mott.org. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.

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Education Week - June 19, 2019

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