Two elementary schools, seven miles apart. Richmond Elementary and Wegner Elementary. Richmond’s in St Charles where their percentage of low-income students is just a fraction of the state average. Wegner’s In West Chicago, where it’s a good deal above it.
But both schools have seen a sharp increase in their homeless student population over the past few years. The state average is 3%, but it’s around 18% at Wegner and at Richmond, 21%.
In a district like St. Charles, Richmond is an outlier. In West Chicago, Wegner’s more of a trend.
Daisy Martinez with the People’s Resource Center walks through the aisles of a food bank that she helps run. It's in a West Chicago school building. A majority of the 100 families who shop here have kids in the district. There are schools on either side of the building and the pantry opens after school, so Martinez says parents often stop by with their kids when they pick them up.
“That," she said, "or before their kid goes to their other events like orchestra, band, sports and stuff. So, I see some kids come through with their gear on."
Sarah Norton says the pantry is one of many community resources the district is part of and can point parents towards. She’s the West Chicago Elementary School District’s Director of Partnerships
She’s also their McKinney-Vento Liaison. McKinney-Vento is the federal law that guarantees the right to education for homeless students. Homeless, in this context, means they don’t have “fixed, regular, or adequate” housing. Often, that looks like families doubled-up because they can’t afford a place on their own.
Norton says McKinney-Vento is also a funding source to help those students get transportation, clothes, and school supplies.
“We have 450 students," she said, "who are McKinney-Vento eligible from our Birth-3 program all the way to eighth grade right now."
In West Chicago, Wegner’s seen a big increase over the past few years but so has the whole district. In 2019, fewer than 2% of the district’s students qualified as homeless. This year, it’s 10%.
Norton says that’s partially because of economic conditions and partially because they’re getting better at identifying homeless students. Pre-pandemic, she says it was on parents during registration to self-identify that they had unstable housing.
“We did update registration processes," she said, "and make sure there's a question in our annual student registration that asks about unstable housing, It lists those three things, like, ‘Are you doubled up? Are you in adequate housing? Is it consistent?’ So, anytime somebody checks that box during registration, we now follow up with them.”
She says they’ve been trained to identify the warning signs of homelessness. But there are also just more homeless students now. That’s for multiple reasons from rising cost of living, to the fact that they’ve had two major apartment fires over the past few years that displaced families overnight.
But why are the numbers so much bigger at Wegner Elementary, where nearly 18% of their students are homeless? Norton says it’s near one of their largest apartment complexes where families are doubled-up.
“It's not because, ‘Oh, we all get along and we want to share housing,'" said Norton. "It's because they can't afford rent anywhere in West Chicago without combining their finances and living together. And it's not necessarily both families' names on the lease. It's very easy, if you were to get caught, that you'd be at risk of losing housing -- both the person who has their name on the lease and the other family staying with them.”
She says the district works closely with community partners to provide case management and afterschool programming for those students. but it’s particularly hard because, once families are priced out of West Chicago, the surrounding suburbs are usually even more expensive.
One of those surrounding suburbs is neighboring St. Charles -- home to Richmond Elementary, which has a rate of homelessness about 10 times higher than the rest of the school district.
Atlee Smith is the district’s family community liaison.
“A lot of people hear St. Charles and they think, ‘Well, we don't have low-income housing here. We don't have affordable housing,’" she said. "I think it’s one of the biggest misconceptions I've really worked hard to bust.”
Two years ago, the district shifted school boundaries and re-classified Richmond from an intermediate to an elementary school. They knew it could concentrate more low-income students at Richmond and a few other schools.
They had a lot of community partners who wanted to help, but they needed to be more deliberate. So, this year, they created an essential needs form, to help get students things the district can’t purchase with McKinney-Vento money.
“Maybe it's prom tickets or it's track shoes," she said, "and we will take that need from our social worker or school staff, put it into our essential needs form. It'll go out to our community lead, and she will email everyone in that network, and someone will say, ‘I'll grab them.'"
Smith helps compile a monthly calendar with frequently needed items depending on the season, like Halloween costumes in September.
The St. Charles School District also partners with the non-profit Big Hearts of Fox Valley to help get Christmas presents for their McKinney-Vento families. They recently held their Santa’s drive-through event on a cold December night. Families pull up in their cars to pick up the presents.
“I'm a foster mom and two little boys who have a homeless status, and it just means the world to get these presents for them," said one St. Charles parent at the event. "They get so overwhelmed and overjoyed. They've never seen anything like it. So, it just blesses our family and provides tremendous support for us as a foster family, keeping up with everything that they need.”
Big Hearts works with the school district’s social workers to get kids’ wish lists so people in the community can buy for them. This year, they gave away well over 10,000 gifts.
Smith says it’s possible that they’ll continue to see high-levels of homelessness at schools like Richmond. But she says she feels confident that they now have systems in place to support those kids.
