Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/48466
ABOVE: Monarch teacher Stacy Bermingham watches Angel problem-solving on the Smart Board. afford to pay rent. And you have renters having to leave because their landlord is going through foreclosure, so you have sec- ondhand victims of foreclosure. I overhear conversations of kids about moving in with their grandmother or living with an aunt, saying they have to move. There are a lot of disconnected telephones when I call." In Redwood City, a suburb about 20 miles from San Francisco, most students are either affluent or poor, and the middle class is rapidly disappearing, says Bret Baird, a physical education teacher at Kennedy Middle School and president of the Red- wood City Teachers Association. "More students are living in crowded quarters," he says. "I've gone on home visits at night, and you see two and three fami- lies living in a one or two bedroom place. Parents are working two or three jobs. It's eye-opening. You think your reality is every- one else's reality until you find out it isn't. It makes me think twice about having students doing homework at home when they have no quiet place to do so." June Garland, director of community services and support in Newport-Mesa Uni- fied School District, verifies addresses of new enrollees and makes visits. She has seen children living in storage units, backyard sheds, and the garage of someone's home. "We also have a lot of what we call 'unaccompanied youths,'" she says. "These are kids who are 16 or 17 and a parent has thrown them out on the street. Many of them are too old for foster care." "Food is a huge issue," reports Pamela Hosmer, program manager for the Chil- dren and Youth in Transition program in San Diego Unified School District. "A lot of organizations and nonprofits that provide food are tapped out. Last year, Feed Amer- ica provided nine of our elementary schools with weekly bags of food for children to bring home to supplement their nutrition on weekends. We need to do this. If kids are hungry, they can't learn." organizations and nonprofits that provide food are tapped out. Pamela Hosmer Food is a huge issue. A lot of 16 California Educator / November 2011 ABOVE: Maggie Peters works with students in the Hoopa Reservation. SUFFERING IS WIDESPREAD While poverty has traditional ly been viewed as an urban issue, it hugely impacts rural areas. "Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified School District has a 100 percent free meal pro- gram for all students," says Maggie Peters, an eighth-grade math and science teacher at Hoopa Elementary School, located in the Hoopa Reservation. "All our students get breakfast and lunch at school year-round." More than 80 percent of the district's stu- dents are Native American, many born into "generational poverty," says Peters, who is president of the Klamath-Trinity Teachers Association. "Poverty is directly correlated with education, and in impoverished, rural