Teachers at Englewood Elementary get food bags ready for their homeless students to take home to their families over the weekend. Photo by Sarah Wilson
Hungry after school By Sarah Wilson
published in theEast Orlando Sun February 2, 2012
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From sleeping in motels, shelters and cars, to living off of free school breakfasts and lunches, and donated groceries,Orange County Public School staff, administrators and teachers say they’ve seen and heard an increasing number of stories of homelessness and hunger from students in the past five years.
As of Thanksgiving, there were 3,241-recorded homeless students in Orange County.
Homelessness and hunger are problems that go hand-in-hand as two of the biggest hurdles facing students living and learning in Orange County, said Homeless Education Liaison for OCPS, Christina Savino.
To help these kids, she said, the county, along with individual schools and partnerships with local businesses and organizations, have increased the number of services they have available to help needy students get by and succeed.
“These students often fall behind, and with education really being the focus and key of getting out of poverty and homelessness,” she said, “it’s important to wrap them around with as many services as possible to keep them on track for graduation.”
From corporate sponsored food pantries and emergency stashes of granola bars kept in teacher drawers, to stocks of surplus school supplies and an extra available jacket when its cold, Savino says every little thing helps.
On Friday afternoon, 26 students fromEnglewood Elementary School file one by one into an unassuming storage closet next to the school’s auditorium.
Their names are checked off a list complied by teachers and administrators as students listed a homeless or in great need, and they’re each handed a paper or plastic bag– sometimes seemingly bigger than they are – filled with six nonperishable food items to take home to feed their family over the weekend.
“Some of these kids during the week depend on our free breakfast and lunch, but then come in again Monday after the weekend and you know they may not have eaten since,” Compliance Teacher Guadalupe Armenteros said. “This way we can make sure they had food.”
Friday, Jan. 27 was opening day forEnglewood’s LOVE Food Pantry – one of 30 to open in Orange and Seminole counties public schools since the fall, coordinated by the Christian Service Center for Central Florida– and half of its shelves are already empty.
At Timber Creek High School, economics teacher Michael Robbins and his students started their own food pantry out of a cupboard in his classroom last year, stocked with canned foods, soups, cereals and granola bars donated by the school community. Robbins says students can drop by whenever they’re in need, or students will be referred to as in need by a teacher or the school’s Homeless Coordinator, Jo Lynn Schall, and provided a bag of food to take with them to their families.
“We recognized that some students at our school didn’t have enough food at home and that times are tough, so we decided we wanted to provide a helping hand,” Robbins said. “…Students can’t learn if they don’t know where their next meal will be coming from.”
In addition to food, Timber Creek as well as other local schools, like East River High School, have clothes closets available to students who might need a jacket when it’s cold, or new pants or shoes if theirs get worn out. The schools also have stocks of school supplies in the office to hand out to students as needed.
“The whole idea is to keep them stable at school since their situation already is what it is at home,” Yolanda Dorta, a social worker for OCPS, said.
Sponsoring change
After CBS’s “60 Minutes” ran two specials on the prevalence of homelessness among students in Central Florida last year, Sarah Au, the senior specialist for Partners in Education with OCPS, said the school board has seen an outpouring of support from local businesses and organizations to try to help students in need.
“It has had such a positive impact in bringing together people who want to help and people who need help,” she said. “We’re trying to match up the businesses that want to help with the schools who need it.”
The LOVE Food Pantry installed at Englewood Elementary is an example of one of these efforts. After viewing the specials, members of the First Baptist Church of Orlando pledged $5 million dollars to go toward helping Central Florida’s hungry and homeless students.
Partnering with OCPS and the Christian Service Center of Central Florida, they decided the money would be best spent toward installing food pantries in schools in need, opening 13 in the fall of 2011. This spring, 17 more have opened across the county, each totally free to the schools they service and restocked weekly.
“After the first semester, the project doubled in size,” Danny de Armas, senior associate pastor at First Baptist Church Orlando, said. “It was not even by us giving any more money, but by other sponsors and businesses hearing about it and wanting to fund more.”
Associates at Keller Williams Realty in Waterford Lakes also saw the CBS special and have decided to dedicate their annual day of service on May 12, known as RED Day, to helping local East Orlando students in need.
Beth Hobart, a realtor with Keller Williams, said the firm has decided to adopt three local schools – Castle Creek, Camelot and Timber Creek – and is currently working out details with the principals and faculty at the schools to assess their needs, and how Keller Williams can best help.
“When we saw the ‘60 Minutes’ special and realized this is happening right in our own backyard, we knew we had to do something,”Hobartsaid.
Stephanie Phillips, the homeless education coordinator at Castle Creek Elementary, said she is very excited about the partnership her school has in the works with Keller Williams and the aid it can bring to her students.
“It’s such a wonderful thing,” she said. “We have a lot of need in our community, but we have a lot of people wanting to help, too.”
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making it difficult to focus and complete her schoolwork when she is not on her medication. She has often been a target for ridicule from her classmates. Fiona’s mother, a native of the West Orange community, has struggled financially for years as a single parent providing for her three daughters. Due to her mother’s on-and-off employment, the family has on occasions been without food or electricity, and has come close to losing their home. Her mother’s financial inability to consistently provide her medication has additionally fueled Fiona’s low self-esteem. Unfortunately, the family’s current economic situation puts Fiona at risk for a lifetime of poverty.
