Homeless Education Network
§ § SERVING MORE KIDS BETTER § §
Maximizing resources and collaborating
to better serve children and youth homeless in Allegheny County
After ten years of experience, research, and one-on-one relationship-building with our partner homeless agencies, the public and parochial schools, county human services providers, regional libraries, and a host of community partners, HCEF is broadening and deepening its efforts to significantly and positively impact the academic achievement of children and youth who are homeless.
Having recognized the need for establishing a formal partnership of entities with responsibilities for ensuring the educational rights and meeting the educational needs of children and youth who are homeless, HCEF is serving as catalyst and convenor of the Homeless Education Network (HEN). The Network aims to transform a currently informal, randomly funded system of public and private community resources for educational programming and social services into an effective and financially sustainable network of providers. The HEN's mission is to serve more kids better: maximizing resources and collaborating to better serve Allegheny County's children and youth who are homeless.
As one HEN partner (director of a homeless residential agency serving families with children) has commented succinctly: "We do need to circle the wagons and hold accountable every entity responsible for our children. I know money is always an issue, but it's such a terrible thing that education is underfunded and these children do not receive the services they are entitled to under our laws."
In response to the obvious need for more funding, State Senator Wayne Fontana of Pittsburgh (a member of HCEF's Board of Advisors) has introduced Senate Bill 1414, which "would create a 19-member task force that includes the Secretaries of the Department of Education, Public Health and Welfare, plus the chair of the PA Housing Finance Agency, and officials from school districts, social service agencies and organizations that help homeless families. Their job would be to develop a report on the educational needs and status of the homeless-child population by assessing and analyzing their demographics and impediments to educational success. It would also help eliminate existing jurisdictional issues. The task force would then present the report to the governor and General Assembly within a year of its initial meeting." See the full story as reported by WDUQ News, August 2, 2010.
In the words of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a June 2010 address entitled Education and Destiny, "This is about so much more than education. This is about social justice. The fight for quality education is a fight for social justice. No other issue offers the same promise of equality as education."
To better understand the great need for an innovative network of public and private providers like HEN, not only here in Pittsburgh but across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and even the nation, see "Underperforming Schools and the Education of Vulnerable Children", by Lisa Walker and Cheryl Smithgall, a 2009 Chapin Hall study out of the University of Chicago and "How do you assign homework to a kid without a home?" published in the NEA Today Magazine for January 2010. More about the Homeless Education Network . . .
Anti-violence programming
We are now offering our homeless housing providers the anti-violence program for children and youth offered by the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime. Click here for a brief overview of the program.
(8/31/10)
Top of page
