‘It’s chaotic.’ How SLO County families living on the edge are adjusting to school online
San Luis Obispo County schools’ transition to distance learning means teachers’ interactions with students are now limited to what they can see on their screens.
They’re no longer exchanging high fives at the classroom door or collecting papers from desks.
They can’t tell which students have worn the same, dirty clothes all week, or who’s sitting at lunch with an empty tray.
In person, “Teachers can observe this change in students’ behavior or appearance or sleeping patterns,” said Wendy Bruse, Lucia Mar Unified School District’s Families in Transition coordinator.
But detecting the signs of an unstable or unsafe home environment got a lot harder when the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to switch to virtual learning in March.
“When we’re sitting in Google classrooms, it’s not necessarily as easy to see,” Bruse said.
Thousands of SLO County students qualify for assistance
A total of 2,965 students qualify for assistance under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act in San Luis Obispo County, according to Jessica Thomas, a program coordinator for homeless and foster youth services at the county Office of Education.
Those students’ living conditions fall under four main categories:
Shelter (homeless shelter or domestic violence shelter): 153 students
Doubled-up (staying with friends or family due to economic hardship): 2,395 students
Hotel (staying in a hotel): 106 students
Unsheltered (camping or living in a car or abandoned building): 311 students.
In total, the county educates about 34,400 students, according to Ed Data.
The McKinney-Vento Act mandates that all students, no matter their economic hardships or living situations, have equal access to the “same free, appropriate public education.” Schools must either provide students resources they may need — such as computers, backpacks and meals — or connect families with organizations that can help provide those resources.
Providing these students resources became a demanding task when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Thomas said. Previously, students had access to technology at school, where teachers and tutors were present to help them when needed.
But when schools closed to in-person learning in March, the world turned upside down.
Students no longer had access to the computers and WiFi at school, and their teachers were suddenly miles away, tucked behind a wall of technology that many simply did not have access to.
So, Thomas said, local school districts and the county Office of Education made massive efforts to provide students with tools to continue their education.
Every student in San Luis Obispo County in need was given a Chromebook computer and a WiFi hotspot, Thomas said. Though every school district in the county was responsible for getting their students the technology, Thomas said, the county Office of Education helped when called for.
Most school districts were able to buy the technology and train teachers using COVID-19 emergency grants that came from the state and county, Thomas said.
Additionally, small grants of a few thousand dollars apiece were given to schools by the county Office of Education, Thomas said.
The El Camino Homeless Organization (ECHO) in Atascadero received a grant from the county Office of Education to help fund a professional tutor for students living at the shelter temporarily, said Wendy Lewis, ECHO president and CEO.
“It’s hard for a lot of parents because they don’t want to have to choose between employment and helping with their kids education,” she said.
With the tutor, parents are able to concentrate on remaining employed and finding stable housing, Lewis said, instead of trying to help their kids with their classwork.
Online learning adds extra burden on low income, homeless families
What a lot of people take for granted is the ability to adjust how available they are to their kids, said Lisa Fraser, the executive director of The Link Family Resource Center in Atascadero. The Link provides resources from housing assistance to clean clothes and a shower to families throughout San Luis Obispo County.
Fraser said some family members can share the responsibility of taking care of children, or take time off from their jobs or modify their work hours.
“But there’s a percentage of our population that doesn’t have that,” Fraser said. “They’re living from day to day. You might have three families in a house. It’s chaotic. It’s noisy. There’s no structure.”
And there are local families who are living without a roof over their head, Fraser said.
Spending time concentrating on schoolwork becomes a newly daunting task for students when they’re required to attend classes from a home that may be taken away from them, she said.
Plus, there are many parents unable to help their kids with school, Fraser said, because they don’t know how to work a computer, don’t know English or lack the skills to help with their students’ homework.
“I don’t care who you are, how good you are, it’s messy and it’s hard,” Fraser said.
When families are having difficulties adjusting to online learning, Bruse said the challenge is getting them to reach out.
Previously, the burden was often on the teachers to report when a a student’s living conditions seemed unstable, Bruse said. But now that responsibility has shifted to the parents and caregivers at home, she said.
“We’ve been doing outreach. We’ve been making phone calls. But if the person on the other end doesn’t answer — what can you do?” Bruse asked. “We’ve tried to do some home visits and things like that, but again, if (the families are) mobile we may not know where to find them.”
Bruse said it’s vitally important that parents and caregivers reach out to their school or school district when in need of assistance because the only way they can help, is if they know there is a need.
Central Coast nonprofits help families find their feet
Bessy Hoffman, a family advocate with The Link, knows what it is like to feel afraid to reach out for help.
Ten years ago — around the same time Hoffman became a U.S. citizen after moving from El Salvador nearly 40 years ago — she lost everything: her house, her car and her job. She feared she would no longer be able to support her husband and her son, she said.
Hoffman knew she had only one option left, so she reached out to the California Department of Social Services for help.
“It is a very humbling experience when you walk in there,” she said. “When people ask you where do you see yourself in 10 years, you never say, ‘Oh, at the Department of Social Services.’ ”
Hoffman also didn’t expect her caseworker at the Department of Social Services to ask her if she knew Sonia Greene, who worked at The Link as a family advocate.
Because Greene and Hoffman worked at the same school, Hoffman recalled, the social worker told her that Greene could be her family’s advocate to help her back on her feet.
“It’s like I lost all my blood, the color went out of my skin,” Hoffman said. “I didn’t want to go talk to somebody I saw all the time about my situation.”
Hoffman decided that, instead of the social worker reaching out to Greene, it would be better if she shared the news herself.
“She sits me down in her office and says, ‘So what’s going on?’ ” Hoffman said. “So I said, ‘Well, we don’t have a car, we have to look for an apartment.’ ”
“And then Sonia just goes, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry, this is going to pass.’ ”
Greene helped Hoffman into an apartment her family still lives in today, and connected her with resources to get her back on her feet.
Hoffman now works at The Link as a family advocate with Greene, and is giving back what she was given. She helps connect students and their parents struggling financially with resources that can help them get into stable living conditions, put food on the table, get clean clothes and finish school.
“These agencies are here for you for emergencies,” she said. “You get help from them when you need, and then you take off. You have to swim, or you’ll drown.”
Could resources for local students run out?
Most schools feel much better prepared to properly serve their students via online learning for this fall than they were in the spring, Thomas said.
But with the economy continuing to fall, resources for students under the McKinney-Vento Act are getting stretched thin, Thomas said.
“We don’t know how long this pandemic is going to last,” Thomas said. Funds the county could provide on an emergency-type basis are now drying up, she said.
Organizations such as The Link are still providing services, though their caseload has grown immensely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re being asked to assist the families we have served in the past, but in a more urgent way,” Fraser said. “And then we’re also being asked to assist the families who would not have come to our doorway because they’ve been really figuring it out for years on their own.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
