YORK, Pa. — Waking up in your bed, eating breakfast and getting on a school bus is a normal morning for most children, but for those experiencing homelessness, these seemingly simple tasks are yet another hurdle to a proper education.
“This is a hard topic to talk about,” said Sonia Pitzi, the Region 3 coordinator for Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness (ECYEH). "People don’t want to believe it happens in their community.”
In the 2021 - 2022 school year, education and community agencies identified 8,176 homeless students across south central Pennsylvania.
“The average age of a person in the United States that’s experiencing homelessness is between the age of 9-12. So when we’re talking about homelessness, we’re talking about children,” said Pitzi
ECYAH works in accordance with the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law passed in 1987 that ensures the educational rights and protections for these children.
“We want to make sure that any student that’s identified as experiencing homelessness that they have as little disruption as possible to their education,” explained Pitzi. "We want consistency, we want stability, in a very much chaotic lifestyle."
They do this in a number of ways. From making sure a child has breakfast and a place to shower, to ensuring they have transportation to the school they’re enrolled at regardless of where they currently live.
“If they go to a shelter in York, but they attend Southern York School District, they want to stay in the Southern York School District,” said Pitzi. "They have the right to do that, but transportation is the issue, so we have to make sure we have that in there."
One of the main obstacles preventing ECYAH from helping more students is being able to identify those in need.
It's a process Pitzi says relies heavily on self reporting.
“There are families that are really good at protecting themselves because they don’t want to be identified as such because there’s still a lot of stigma involved, and there’s still a lot of judgment involved, so they don’t want to self identify,” she said.
To fight this, Pitzi and her team of school district liaisons work to educate administrators, teachers, even bus drivers on what to look out for so they can continue to work with the youth, in hopes of stopping the cycle of homelessness.
"This is a problem,” said Pitzi. "Are we going to end homelessness? No. I’ve been doing this for nearly three decades; we are not going to end homelessness. Can we make it a little better by providing services and school and all that? Absolutely."
If you or someone you know is experiencing homelessness, contact Pennsylvania's Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program.