Joblessness Causing Schools To Increasingly Act As Social Service Centers

by Mike Smith · 2009-11-29 06:37:00 UTC
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As schools suffer huge deficits, some states have had to close their doors one day a week in Hawaii, and teaching positions are being cut nationwide, all having a huge impact on the quality of students' education. But students' wellbeing is also suffering from parents' joblessness. There's a greater need for subsidized meals and other services, and schools are having to shoulder the burden, reports the Washington Post.

More kids need free or reduced price meals and "As the lunchroom poverty barometer rises, schools are solidifying their role as centers for social services." Services are expanding to providing clothes, resources, and lunches to ensure their students always have something to eat over the weekend. There's also psychological problems, with some students becoming schoolphobic, "afraid to spend long hours away from home in case something bad happens while they are gone." It's a side of education easily forgotten, lost among talk of the necessity of technological innovation and the rules regarding the provision of Race To The Top stimulus funds.

Photo: Andres Rueda

Mike Smith is associate editor at Change.org.
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