IBO report focuses on homeless public school students

Sign up for our FREE acclaimed newsletters!

The news mainstream media just doesn’t cover. Racial justice journalism since 1909.

Sign up

New York City’s Independent Budget Office released a report that highlights the tribulations of homeless public school students in the five boroughs.

According to the report, approximately 7 percent of the city’s 75,000 public school students lived in the city’s homeless shelter system or were doubled up in the home of a friend of a family member during the 2013-2014 school year. The report also revealed that a disproportionate number of these students were concentrated in a “relatively” small number of city schools.

Of the 1,669 schools examined in IBO’s report, 25 percent served a population in which at least 5 percent of enrolled students were identified as living in shelters and at least 7 percent of enrolled students were identified as living in “doubled-up housing” for all or part of the 2013-2014 school year.

The number of schools that served populations in which more than 10 percent of students were identified as living in shelters was 120, and 12 schools had more than 20 percent of the students living in shelters.

A total of 218 schools served populations in which more than 10 percent of students were identified as living in doubled-up housing, and 34 schools had more than 20 percent of enrolled students identified as living doubled up with another family.

In contrast, 34 percent of New York City’s public schools (560 schools) had less than 1 percent of their student populations living in shelters, nearly 280 schools had no students identified as living in doubled-up housing.

Living in substandard or suboptimal housing conditions can affect a student’s behavior, grades and school attendance. The IBO’s study found that students who lived at least part of the school year in homeless shelters were absent from school 18 days more, on average, than their peers who had permanent housing or were just doubled up with a family that had permanent housing. How ever, from third grade to eighth grade, doubled-up and homeless students both scored significantly lower on state tests than their permanently housed peers.

Homeless students were also more than twice as likely to be suspended from school as students who had a permanent home.