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A record-high 154,000 public school students — or nearly one in seven — were homeless across New York City during the last school year, grim new data revealed Monday.
Of those children, more than 65,000 were forced to spend at least one night in a Big Apple homeless shelter and roughly 7,000 were living in motels, according to the figures compiled for the Advocates for Children of New York’s annual report.
The shocking numbers mark an all-time high of homeless kids in the city’s public school system — but continue a decade-long trend, the report obtained by NY1 shows.
“This is the 10th year in a row where over 100,000 kids were identified as homeless last school year. This is the first year it was over 150,000 students experiencing homelessness. These numbers obviously are very troubling,” Jennifer Pringle, project director at Advocates for Children, said.
In addition, roughly 67% of students living in the shelters are chronically absent from class, the report found.
“That means that 67% of students living in shelters miss more than 10% of the school year. That is roughly a month of school,” Pringle said.
“40% of families are placed in shelter in a different borough from where they go to school — not just neighborhood, not community school district, different borough. That poses all sorts of challenges for families,” she added.
“Long commutes, meaning parents can’t work. They can’t look for permanent housing because they’re busy spending their day, taking their child back and forth to school.”
English (US)