One in 23 Canby students are homeless

The homeless liaison program in Canby schools serves as a model to school districts statewide

  • By: Peggy Savage  
  • Published: 11/17/2009 4:00:16 PM
  • Last Updated: 11/18/2009 9:06:05 PM
John Hackworth hiked through the woods behind an I-5 rest area recently to find a homeless family whose children attend Canby schools. He got the family help, including a place to live.

Hackworth, the Canby School District homeless liaison, said the family had been living at the Baldock rest area for seven months. He had to go on a search to find them.

“They were hidden back in the trees, and kept their kids in our schools the whole time,” Hackworth said.  “We have other families who pull a trailer into the back area of local farms, in the trees where they are hidden from view, and they just camp there.”

Four years ago, Hackworth started a homeless liaison program in Canby Schools. Today, the scGot a News Tip?hool district’s program serves as a model to districts statewide.

“This program in Canby is probably the best homeless program in the state of Oregon,” said Rex Haagan, who serves on numerous state, county and district education boards and task forces.

The reason is that through Hackworth’s guidance, Canby schools have developed ways to identify homeless students in the classrooms and find the children and their families immediate help.

“We pay attention,” Hackworth said. “We listen to what parents and kids say. There are a lot of things people say that help us to identify them as homeless. If a teacher hears something, the teacher comes to us and we get things going to help the student.”

Hackworth presented the following report to the Canby School Board Thursday,
showing the number of homeless students in Canby Schools from 2002 to the present:
2002-03 — 31
2003-04 — 137
2004-05 — 142
2005-06 — 184
2006-07 — 243
2007-08 — 280
2008-09 — 383 (91 were CHS students)
2009-10 — 219 (52 are CHS students)

The school district tracks homeless students and gives the required report to the state each year, and the number of homeless students has been on the rise every year, since the Canby School District began keeping track.

How many are homeless?

Currently, one in every 23 Canby students is homeless. Hackworth said to date, a total of 219 homeless children are attending Canby schools, with 52 of them at Canby High School. 

 A report released in September by the state Department of Education put Oregon’s homeless student population for the 2008-09 school year at 18,059, an increase of nearly 14 percent from the previous school year.

Listed in the report were the 12 Oregon school districts with the highest counts of homeless students. Canby was not on that list. In fact, Canby School District was not mentioned anywhere in the report. 

Last school year, however, with 383 homeless students in the schools, it was a different story. And, Hackworth said, the number of homeless students in Canby could increase dramatically over the winter months.

“This year’s not over — the numbers are cumulative,” he said. “And we are slightly ahead of where we were last year at this time. We took a tremendous jump last year because of the weather in December and January, and I don’t know what will happen this winter.”

Why do Canby’s homeless numbers seem high?

Superintendent Jeff Rose lauded Hackworth for his efforts at Thursday’s school board meeting, noting that the reason Canby’s homeless numbers seem high is that Hackworth and his team of liaisons do such a good job of finding the homeless children in the schools.

“Not all districts have a John Hackworth and the ones who do are not as aggressive at identifying their homeless students,” Rose said. “What I keep in mind is that 383 kids need help. That’s dramatic. And it’s not just a sign of the times. We are doing a better job to find these families and help them.

“So don’t focus on where Canby is in comparison to other school districts,” Rose cautioned community members. “We need to think about how we find those students.”

Help for homeless students

Whatever happens in the coming months, Hackworth said he and the homeless liaisons in every Canby school will be prepared to identify and help homeless students. He meets once a month with the liaisons and advocates to help keep track. And, he noted, the sources of help in the Canby community have grown in recent years.

Now, homeless students get help from such local sources as Operation Snuggle, St. Patrick Food Bank, the Canby Community Food and Toy Drive and, of course, the Canby Center, which has worked with the school district four years, giving needed support to homeless students.

The Canby School District provides free lunch, medical and dental fees and clothing vouchers for the Canby Center or the Clackamas County Clothing Center.

“Every time we track a student, we keep notes and records on the books for four years,” he said. “Canby Center is absolutely marvelous in providing services to students in the schools.”

At Canby High School, six staff members serve as homeless liaisons to some extent, and the principal at each school in the district serves as homeless liaison for their school.

Who are the homeless?

Some homeless families live temporarily in shelters; others double-up, with one family taking in another to share their home for a while; homeless teenagers flop on a friends couch for a night or live on the street, he said.

And noting how often families of students move from school to school has been one of the main ways to identify homeless children and keeping them in school.

“We are returning students to their school of origin,” Hackworth said. “They move from one school to another, and we see a loss of four to six months in their learning because of the moves. So we try to keep kids in the same school. If kids move to another area, we work with their parents to return the student to their original school. It’s important to keep them there to continue their education and keep their social contacts at school.”

What does the future look like?

Hackworth said the district needs to get additional funding at federal, state and county levels.
“We need further cooperation with Clackamas County and hopefully, we will soon recover,” he said.


 

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