There has been a 9 percent increase in homeless students in our Oregon schools, according to a post by OregonLive from October 2015. So what does this mean? It means that in the 2014-2015 school year, Oregon had 20,524 homeless students enrolled in its districts. And this means that a staggering 4% of all students live in an unstable home environment, which ranges from living in a motel to a shelter to a tent.
Obviously, this is a gigantic problem that isn’t getting the public attention it deserves. There is much being done among districts, like the example in the video in Reynold’s Middle School, but is this enough? A recent post on this blog is about the new plan being implemented in the metro-Portland area to combat homelessness. But where is the specific attention to the thousands of children who do not know where their next meal comes from or where they will be sleeping tonight? No wonder Oregon ranks among the lowest in education in the country. Without the proper support, how can we expect children to perform well in school, or even make education a priority?
I do not know what course of action needs to be taken, but with that said, the first step needs to be increasing public awareness. I did not know these statistics before accidentally stumbling upon this article, and I am shocked at how dramatically the numbers have been steadily increasing. It should not be the school’s responsibility to support students and their parents in this way, yet in many cases this is the necessary action that is being taken. Our state government should be held accountable to provide more aid and resources to these families who are trying to establish consistency in their children’s lives.
-Samantha Sidline
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