In the last school year, nearly 1 in every 10 students in New York City public schools was homeless, according to new data released on Wednesday. A total of 104,383 children lacked permanent housing during the 2021-22 school year across districts, an increase of about 3.3 percent from the previous school year, according to an annual report released by Advocates for Children New York,a nonprofit organization that annually collects data on homeless students.
About 28 percent or more than 29,000 students were living in city shelters, while nearly 5 percent or about 5,500 students were considered “Unaltered”, living in cars, parks and abandoned buildings, according to the report. Nearly 360 children lived in hotels or motels. About 69,000 children were “doubled up”, meaning they stayed with extended family and friends after losing permanent housing or facing economic difficulties, the report found.
Meanwhile,the country’s largest school district has been losing students,with roughly 120,000 leaving over the last five years. Public school enrollment(入学) has dropped by nearly 9.5 percent since the pandemic started.
“While the city works to address the issue of homelessness, we also must ensure that students who are homeless get to class every day and receive the targeted support they need to succeed in school,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, said.
During the last school year, almost 2 in 3 students living in shelters were considered “chronically (经常反复发生地) absent”, which means they missed at least 10 percent of school days. Chronic absence hurts students’ academic performance. In the 2020-21 school year, 70 percent of students who were homeless graduated, compared with 81 percent of all students. They were also more than three times more likely to drop out of high school than their classmates who do have housing.
“If we want to break this bad cycle of poverty and homelessness, we have to make sure we’re prioritizing education of students in temporary housing,”Jennifer Pringle, director of Project Learning in Temporary Housing for Advocates for Children, told The New York Times.“The consequences are just awful and without a coordinated(协调一致的), targeted response, we’re not going to see a change.”
【小题1】How many students took city shelters as their living places in the 2021-2022 school year in NYC?| A．Nearly 360. | B．About 5,500. |
| C．Over 29,000. | D．About 69,000. |
| A．The causes of so many homeless children. |
| B．The ways the homeless children lived their life. |
| C．The measures to solve the problem of homeless children. |
| D．The influences of homelessness on the children’s education. |
| A．Treating something as being more important than other things. |
| B．Stopping something from being done especially by law. |
| C．Getting something,especially by making an effort. |
| D．Trying to discover facts about something. |
| A．Homeless students in NYC face challenges in life |
| B．NYC works to address issue of homelessness |
| C．Nation’s largest school district—NYC loses students |
| D．1 in 10 NYC students homeless during last school year |
