Anonymous wrote:There are several public boarding schools in DC. It's very hard to do this well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/leadership-of-troubled-dc-public-boarding-school-votes-to-close-facility-at-end-of-academic-year/2019/06/05/c98a42aa-86f2-11e9-a870-b9c411dc4312_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-charter-school-did-not-do-enough-to-prevent-childs-suicide-family-says-in-lawsuit/2019/01/24/afa6345e-201b-11e9-bc0e-f07c1e4b34fc_story.html

Anonymous wrote:I would argue that determining an excused versus unexcused absence is not equal across the district. And parents know how to game the system- more than 1.3% of Walls kids miss 20 days of school a year- their parents just know how to get those absences excused.

Anonymous wrote:I think there should be a boarding school (local) situation for kids experiencing housing instability. Putting them in a stable, monitored
, consistent environment with a focus on education and extracurriculars would solve many problems, truancy being the tip of the iceberg not to mention hunger, abuse, crime, etc. give these poor kids a chance.

Anonymous wrote:I think there should be a boarding school (local) situation for kids experiencing housing instability. Putting them in a stable, monitored
, consistent environment with a focus on education and extracurriculars would solve many problems, truancy being the tip of the iceberg not to mention hunger, abuse, crime, etc. give these poor kids a chance.

Anonymous wrote:Ok, I'll be that person.

These are the consequences of prolonged school closures. The truancy rates and the juvenile crime issues.

If we want to address these issues, we need politicians and policy-makers who are willing to come in and say, out loud: We broke trust and destroyed relationships between schools and families during the Covid closures. We abandoned the kids in the district who most desperately need support from the education system. We need a plan that directly addresses this problem and finds a way to get these kids back into classrooms, back connected with the functional, law-abiding aspects of our community. This will likely require direct family intervention that addresses all aspects of the dysfunction that was made much worse during the pandemic -- mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, and criminality. We need funding to hire more truancy officers, social workers, and family services counselors and we need to start identifying the kids and families who need serious intervention and doing whatever we can to at LEAST return to pre-Covid numbers.

You can't treat a disease when you refuse to name it. This isn't about schools miscategorizing absences. This is about a broken system that wasn't doing great pre-Covid but absolutely collapsed during school closures. We need to repair it.

I am so angry that no one will talk about these issues with the directness and honesty that is needed. Are we still pretending school closures were just inconveniences for rich white people and actually helped poor communities in the city? Really? After the test scores, the truancy rates, and the juvenile crime stats all make it abundantly clear that the opposite is true?

We messed up. Schools should have reopened in July 2020 (yes, July, the push should have been to get in-person summer school for all at risk kids ASAP and then everyone back in August). It's fine to acknowledge people were scared and that a lot of other cities made a similar mistake. But it WAS a mistake. We need to fix it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work as a case manager in DC. If you want to solve truancy in DC you need to solve the housing crisis.

There are ton of marginally housed kids (mostly with mothers) in DC. They bounce from DC to PG County and back again, often by the week or by the month or even by the day. From an aunt's basement to a friend's couch. Then they don't have cars or transportation so getting to school is hard if not impossible.

I really don't think DCUM has ANY idea of how prevalent this situation is.

You want school stability? House them all with fully subsidized housing. But that is super expensive----$2-4K/month per kid or family unit of kids.

This could account for incremental growth in elementary but not the incredibly high rates in HS …

huh? by high school you have the cumulative effect of years of housing instability and so many kids who are then behind in school as a result. Many of them drop out by high school or effectively drop out by never attending.
Trust me, it's all connected. Ask anyone who actually works in the trenches of social services, day in and day out.

You house people, you will solve about 95% of DC's problems in a generation. It is the #1, 2, 3 concern of almost every DC resident who lives under the poverty line. It's pretty much the only thing I get asked about every day.
There are the people that you think about as homeless (those who lives in tents) but then an absolute SEA of people who are what we call "marginally housed"----they live with relatives, friends, in unstable rent situations, etc. etc, etc.

DCUM doesn't want to hear about it. No one does. Because it's expensive and it doesn't seem fair (why should I bust my a$$ to pay my mortgage when XYZ gets a $4k housing voucher for free?). But it's the root
of many problems in DC.

Off my soapbox.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work as a case manager in DC. If you want to solve truancy in DC you need to solve the housing crisis.

There are ton of marginally housed kids (mostly with mothers) in DC. They bounce from DC to PG County and back again, often by the week or by the month or even by the day. From an aunt's basement to a friend's couch. Then they don't have cars or transportation so getting to school is hard if not impossible.

I really don't think DCUM has ANY idea of how prevalent this situation is.

You want school stability? House them all with fully subsidized housing. But that is super expensive----$2-4K/month per kid or family unit of kids.

This could account for incremental growth in elementary but not the incredibly high rates in HS …

huh? by high school you have the cumulative effect of years of housing instability and so many kids who are then behind in school as a result. Many of them drop out by high school or effectively drop out by never attending.
Trust me, it's all connected. Ask anyone who actually works in the trenches of social services, day in and day out.

You house people, you will solve about 95% of DC's problems in a generation. It is the #1, 2, 3 concern of almost every DC resident who lives under the poverty line. It's pretty much the only thing I get asked about every day.
There are the people that you think about as homeless (those who lives in tents) but then an absolute SEA of people who are what we call "marginally housed"----they live with relatives, friends, in unstable rent situations, etc. etc, etc.

DCUM doesn't want to hear about it. No one does. Because it's expensive and it doesn't seem fair (why should I bust my a$$ to pay my mortgage when XYZ gets a $4k housing voucher for free?). But it's the root
of many problems in DC.

Off my soapbox.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work as a case manager in DC. If you want to solve truancy in DC you need to solve the housing crisis.

There are ton of marginally housed kids (mostly with mothers) in DC. They bounce from DC to PG County and back again, often by the week or by the month or even by the day. From an aunt's basement to a friend's couch. Then they don't have cars or transportation so getting to school is hard if not impossible.

I really don't think DCUM has ANY idea of how prevalent this situation is.

You want school stability? House them all with fully subsidized housing. But that is super expensive----$2-4K/month per kid or family unit of kids.

This could account for incremental growth in elementary but not the incredibly high rates in HS …

huh? by high school you have the cumulative effect of years of housing instability and so many kids who are then behind in school as a result. Many of them drop out by high school or effectively drop out by never attending.
Trust me, it's all connected. Ask anyone who actually works in the trenches of social services, day in and day out.

You house people, you will solve about 95% of DC's problems in a generation. It is the #1, 2, 3 concern of almost every DC resident who lives under the poverty line. It's pretty much the only thing I get asked about every day.
There are the people that you think about as homeless (those who lives in tents) but then an absolute SEA of people who are what we call "marginally housed"----they live with relatives, friends, in unstable rent situations, etc. etc, etc.

DCUM doesn't want to hear about it. No one does. Because it's expensive and it doesn't seem fair (why should I bust my a$$ to pay my mortgage when XYZ gets a $4k housing voucher for free?). But it's the root
of many problems in DC.

Off my soapbox.

Anonymous wrote:It’s wild that DCPS paid 1/2 mil on consultants to address truancy. Seriously wtf.

I agree that the answer is to expel kids who are chronically truant. Let’s make sure the kids who want to go to school have access to education. The other kids can be filtered into an online GED program.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work as a case manager in DC. If you want to solve truancy in DC you need to solve the housing crisis.

There are ton of marginally housed kids (mostly with mothers) in DC. They bounce from DC to PG County and back again, often by the week or by the month or even by the day. From an aunt's basement to a friend's couch. Then they don't have cars or transportation so getting to school is hard if not impossible.

I really don't think DCUM has ANY idea of how prevalent this situation is.

You want school stability? House them all with fully subsidized housing. But that is super expensive----$2-4K/month per kid or family unit of kids.

This could account for incremental growth in elementary but not the incredibly high rates in HS …

Anonymous wrote:I work as a case manager in DC. If you want to solve truancy in DC you need to solve the housing crisis.

There are ton of marginally housed kids (mostly with mothers) in DC. They bounce from DC to PG County and back again, often by the week or by the month or even by the day. From an aunt's basement to a friend's couch. Then they don't have cars or transportation so getting to school is hard if not impossible.

I really don't think DCUM has ANY idea of how prevalent this situation is.

You want school stability? House them all with fully subsidized housing. But that is super expensive----$2-4K/month per kid or family unit of kids.