Homeless Families Struggle With Impossible Choices As School Closures
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The closure of school buildings in response to the coronavirus has been
disruptive and inconvenient for many families, but for those living in
homeless shelters or hotel rooms — including roughly 1.5 million school-aged children — the shuttering of classrooms and cafeterias
has been disastrous.
For Rachel, a 17-year-old sharing a hotel room in Cincinnati with her
mother, the disaster has been academic. Her school gave her a laptop, but
"hotel Wi-Fi is the worst," she says. "Every three seconds [my teacher is]
like, 'Rachel, you're glitching. Rachel, you're not moving.'"
For Vanessa Shefer, the disaster has made her feel "defeated." Since May,
when the family home burned, she and her four children have stayed in a
hotel, a campground and recently left rural New Hampshire to stay with
extended family in St. Johnsbury, Vt. Her kids ask, "When are we going to
have a home?" But Shefer says she can't afford a "home" without a
good-paying job, and she can't get a job while her kids need help with
school.
For this story, NPR spoke with students, parents, caregivers, shelter
managers and school leaders across the country about what it means, in this
moment, to be homeless CONTINUE READING: Work Or Online Learning? Homeless Families Face An Impossible Choice :
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