When Cornell superintendent Aaron Thomas interviews a potential administrator, he wants to know if the candidate will drive a school van. Administrators, including the superintendent, sometimes need to drive a parent to a teacher conference or a child to a doctor appointment.
At Grandview Upper Elementary School in the Highlands School District, it’s not unusual for principal Heather Hauser to find a bag of groceries on her desk, left anonymously by a staff member. The school started a food pantry after a student one Friday said he didn’t have anything to eat at home.
At Pittsburgh Faison K-5 in Homewood, the nonprofit Homewood Children’s Village provides extra sets of hands to help in the high-poverty school, among them a community school site director, four den advisers who help tutor and four social work interns who call families when children are absent and find ways to help.
School isn’t about just reading, writing and arithmetic.
Using their own staff and community partners, public schools are finding ways to address the many needs of children — such as hunger, homelessness, violence in their homes or communities, grief, mental health issues and inadequate clothing — that are barriers to their learning.
“The issues that kids have are not left at the schoolhouse door,” said Baldwin High School social worker Annette Fiovaniss.
Ms. Hauser recalled a child who sometimes melted down in the morning. “The first thing I would do is say, ‘Let me see your feet.’ When he didn’t have socks on, I knew that day for him was difficult.”
She got him clean socks at the nurse’s office. “That helped put his day back together,” she said.
While some researchers found teachers are the most important school-related factor, outside factors — including individual and family characteristics — may have four to eight times the impact as teachers do on student achievement, according to a Rand Corp. report.
Kellie Irwin, who has been a school social worker in Woodland Hills for more than 30 years, said, “A lot of my job is trying to get the kids to a place they can learn. … You can’t expect a child to score well on the Keystone Exams or the algebra test or whatever subject you want if they are hungry, they don’t have proper clothing or they don’t know where they’re going to sleep that night.”
In Allegheny County, all school districts provide free or reduced-price school lunch to needy students. Most districts also serve breakfast, and a few offer a snack, too. In Pittsburgh and a handful of other districts, so many students are needy that all get the food free.
Some agencies or volunteers help to provide food to take home on Fridays as well, including a new effort by the Buhl Foundation in partnership with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and FOCUS North America, an Orthodox Christian organization, that this fall will begin providing weekend food for nearly 2,000 North Side students.
Some schools provide clothes for students as needed. Pittsburgh Langley K-8 in Sheraden has coats on hand in the winter. Baldwin High School staff donated clothes for a needy student when an email told of the need and the sizes. For years, Pittsburgh Lincoln PreK-5 has had a washer and dryer to help students whose clothes are dirty.
Some of the barriers, such as food and housing insecurity, are related to poverty. Nationwide, 22 percent of children under age 18 are living in poverty, with 19 percent in Pennsylvania, according to Annie E. Casey Foundation data from 2013, the latest available figures.
At the same time, many students are receiving human services. In Pittsburgh Public Schools, 53 percent of the students had prior involvement with at least one of 14 child welfare, behavioral health, support programs, intellectual disability and juvenile justice programs, according to the county Department of Human Services. In the Clairton School District, the figure was 74 percent.
Students receiving services face challenges to do well in school, or even to show up. In Pittsburgh Public Schools, more than half of the students who missed 20 percent of the school year in 2011-12 are involved in the human services system, according to a county report. Most students who missed that much school have GPAs that fall below 2.5, according to the report.
Needs rise, staff shrinks
While many schools have staff members tackling social service needs, such resources are often limited.
On average, statewide in 2013-14 when K-12 public school enrollment totaled more than 1.7 million students, there was one guidance counselor for every 409 students. There was an average of the full-time equivalent of 1 nurse for every 877 students, with many school nurses traveling from one building to another. And in a state with 500 school districts, there was just the full-time equivalent of 250 social workers.
“I haven’t met one school which has enough social workers for the work they have,” said Samantha Murphy, resource services manager in the integrated services program of the county Department of Human Services.
Beyond their own staffs, schools also are relying on outside groups for help.
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