The children walk in a loose stream from the school bus stop near the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store on Mack Smith Road. Crossing the restaurant’s wooden porch, they slap the row of old-fashioned rocking chairs, sending them nodding back and forth with the energy of a dozen little hands.
From there, they scuff across the parking lot, the little boys chasing one another, dragging their school bags home to the Superior Creek Lodge.
Extended-stay motels such as Superior Creek have become the housing of last resort for a growing number of low-income families across the region.
Because guests are neither required to pay a security deposit nor subjected to a credit check, the motels tend to attract a combination of people who come and go and those who wind up staying longer than they expected. The relative instability of residents’ lives takes a toll on their children and puts an added burden on the school system.
About 40 children from Superior Creek attend Spring Creek Elementary School, a number that rises throughout the year as new families arrive in the area in search of work, Principal Paula Burgner said.
“Sometimes when a parent will come in, we’ll say, ‘Well, what school was your child in?” Ms. Burgner said. “And he’ll say, ‘Well, this year, he’s been in three schools already’ and it’s only October.”
HIGH STAKES FOR
SCHOOLS, STUDENTS
In the era of No Child Left Behind, when schools can be penalized for failing to meet federal benchmarks, one of the most daunting tasks for educators is ensuring their students are performing up to grade level. Although students who live in motels generally come from loving homes, Ms. Burgner said, it’s not always enough to help them succeed in school.
“A lot of times children who live in situations like that come to us so behind in their academic growth that it’s very hard to catch up,” she said.
High truancy rates also put schools in jeopardy of being put on the No Child Left Behind list, according to Sheryl Randolph, director of student services for the Hamilton County School system.
While added support and tutoring are available for homeless families, not all those who might need it qualify for it, Ms. Randolph said. Whether a family lives in a shelter, with relatives or in a motel, a student is considered homeless only if the family tells the district they are, she said.
Homeless students receive free after-school tutoring, school uniforms and help connecting to additional social services.
The school district also spends about $30,000 a year complying with federal law that requires homeless children to be bused home, even if their residence falls outside the school zone.
“We’ll provide transportation because we don’t want to inflict additional changes on the students,” Ms. Randolph said.
Of the 40,000 or so students who attend school in Hamilton County, the district only serves about 300 homeless students, records show.
Motel residents who don’t consider themselves homeless, she said, receive no assistance.
“Sometimes when individuals come to register with us, they’ll put a hotel address and we’ll say, ‘Oh, are you’re a family in transition or homeless? And what other services can we provide for you?’ They’ll say, ‘Oh no, I’m not homeless. This is where I choose to live,’” Ms. Randolph said.
Lori Dunn, 28, said her family is happily settled into their life at Superior Creek but admits she didn’t expect her family to live there as long as they have.
“You’ll live here longer than you think you will,” said Ms. Dunn, 28. “(I told myself) ‘No, no, I’m moving out, within a couple of months I’ll be gone.’ And that wasn’t the case at all. A year and two months later, I’m still here.”
Last summer, Ms. Dunn’s twin sister, Becky Wilson, chose to move to the motel to save on living expenses. She said her two daughters attend Spring Creek Elementary and are doing well in school.
“They love it here. They don’t want to move, and I have no intentions of moving anytime soon,” she said.
She worries, however, about how her children would be perceived.
“I didn’t want to give them this stress because I didn’t want to be pinned as a bad parent for living here,” Ms. Wilson said. “I keep up with my kids, I know what they’re doing and they don’t get in trouble, but you get pinned.”
TEACHING THE VALUE
OF EDUCATION
One of the trickier challenges for educators, though, is one that money can’t solve. Almost as important as teaching children the basic skills, Ms. Burgner said, is teaching them the importance of education.
“They’re modeling what they’ve seen at home, and if education has not been valued by the parent or whatever adult they live with then it’s not valued by them unless we can teach it,” she said. “Sometimes we don’t have them long enough to teach it.”
If the school doesn’t succeed in instilling these values in its students, Ms. Burgner said, they likely will drop out before graduating from high school.
Superior Creek resident Rosemary Keltch, 39, said she dropped out of high school to take care of her terminally ill father and urged her four sons not to follow her path. “I told them, ‘I didn’t do well in school.’ I want at least one to graduate,” she said.
Thus far, she said, the three oldest ones did not complete high school, but she still holds out hope for the youngest one, who is in ninth grade.
“I’ve got him stuck in school
and he’s not going to drop out,” she said.
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