ATLANTA (AP) — As an education reporter, I hear teachers worry that the most harmful challenges their students face are: poverty Issues such as housing insecurity are beyond the scope of schools to solve.
I wanted to understand more about how it rises Housing costs And widespread evictions can undermine young people’s ability to thrive in school and life.
According to research Children who are threatened with eviction are more likely to transfer to schools with lower resources, higher poverty, and lower test scores. For those who are likely to be absent from school and will have to transfer schools, Paused More often.
I have seen this firsthand through my own reporting. A few years ago, when I was writing about this, students absent from school For months or more, many said they were initially unable to attend classes because of the housing collapse. They lost their homes, ended up living with relatives, and were unable to return to school for more than a few weeks.
So I called a parent organizer in Atlanta who introduced me to other families struggling with that city’s rapid growth. gentrification.
She told me about Ceshita McNair, a talkative mother of three. Return to Atlanta after eviction So that her children can stay in school.
McNair was one of the easiest characters I’ve ever written because he was a veteran of the film industry. She understood my desire to document or understand every step of the eviction and children’s advocacy process. I didn’t have to explain why I asked the question or why I wanted to know so much about where she was. when she received a phone callor why you wanted her to send you emails and documents. She was an open book and genuinely thought others might benefit from her patient and resourceful reading.
Her life was so complicated that it was also difficult to write about her. Although McNair has taken on immense responsibilities as a family without the support of other relatives, she has a strong belief that things will work out if she just keeps moving. Her circumstances and plans will change rapidly. Sometimes I had a hard time keeping up.
I traveled to Atlanta three times over the course of a few months to visit McNair, and we stayed in constant contact during that time. I often talked to her while dropping off the kids at school or picking up an Uber Eats order. The result is a close-up portrait of her life as a single mother trying to swim across a river with three boys on her back.
This is the most difficult part. Everything McNair was doing – moving her children back to Atlanta – is exactly what researchers say she should be doing. She should send the children to the same school so that they can be in a stable environment.
But so far, that’s not enough.
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bianca vazquez tones Covering the intersection of education and child welfare. She was among the first in the nation to show how many students were missing school after the pandemic, and her work was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize.
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