Chicago Public Schools officials are in the midst of an ambitious campaign to marshal city agencies, retailers and faith-based community organizations in the pursuit of one cause: Getting students back to school.
“It all starts on day one,” Jean-Claude Brizard, the district’s chief executive officer, stressed at a press conference announcing the two-week back-to-school blitz, which includes door-to-door outreach, phone banking, robo calls and a Groupon deal intended to equip needy CPS students with school supply kits.
Yet a leading homeless advocacy group insists the initiative is missing a critical element: Free first-day rides.
Laurene Heybach, director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless Law Project, said CPS’ back-to-school efforts amount to little if they do not help the district’s estimated 10,000 homeless students who use public transportation get to their first day of school.
For nearly a decade, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless has tried to convince the Chicago Transit Authority to provide free rides for CPS students’ first day of school—going so far as to coin the yet-to-be-used slogan: “Catch a ride to your future.”
The CTA has never agreed to offer free back-to-school rides. Yet with 15,580 CPS students designated as homeless, a record high for the district, coalition officials said the need to link students with services at the start of the school year is greater than ever. The group is also hopeful that turnover at City Hall, CPS and the CTA bodes well for their cause.
“We feel like there is a new opportunity, so we are raising the issue again,” said Patricia Nix-Hodes, associate director of the coalition’s Law Project.
On Friday, Heybach sent a letter to new CTA president Forrest Claypool asking the agency to consider offering free rides to all CPS students on the city’s two beginning days of school, Aug. 8 and Sept. 6.
“For homeless students especially,” Heybach wrote, “transportation is critical to enable on-time enrollment and attendance.”
The CTA offers students a reduced fare of 85 cents per ride. A full fare CTA ride costs $2.25. A CTA spokesperson said the agency cannot offer free rides without legislative action.
Students who qualify for reduced rate CTA passes, which are purchased with grants through the office of Educational Support for Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS), must physically pick them up at school. Some reduced fare passes are available at shelters for families with CPS students living in shelters. Parents of homeless students in 6th grade and lower are also eligible for free fare cards.
Yet for those who are unable to finance their first ride to get to their free CTA pass, the absences can compound quickly, said Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University.
“They are going to have some kids that are just out of it, literally,” without free CTA rides, Radner said. “Especially if you’re homeless, the last thing you need is instability. You need structure and certainty, and those are the elements that the first day provides.”
Getting students situated in the classroom, especially those with precarious living situations, is imperative for youth already feeling placeless, Radner said.
“They are already feeling out of place in Chicago because they don’t have a home,” she said. “And now they are feeling out of place because they are missing day one.”
Last year the overall district attendance rate was 89 percent, a number Brizard has promised to increase.
Other major U.S. cities reached by the Chicago News Cooperative do not offer free back-to-school rides. Representatives from the public transit systems in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York all said that they were not aware of operating any program similar to what the coalition is proposing.
In 1992 the coalition sued CPS, alleging the district was not complying with the the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Act of 1987, which mandated that school districts provide transportation for homeless students to and from their schools. The suit was settled with a consent decree in 1997, though the group took CPS back to court in 1999 over claims the district was not complying with the decree. A settlement was reached in 2000 and the coalition began meeting with CPS regularly to improve the STLS program.
In 2001, the McKinney-Vento act was incorporated into the federal No Child Left Behind education legislation.
In Chicago, where the population of homeless students has more than doubled in the past ten years, advocates said support is inconsistent.
“I don’t really understand if they do offer these rides for a penny on New Year’s Eve, why they could not do a similar thing on the first day of school,” said the coalition’s Nix-Hodes, referring to the one cent rides the CTA offers on New Year’s Eve.
“Penny rides are a tradition that the CTA plans for each year and is factored into the budget,” a CTA spokesperson said in statement.
“We really think it would be a public service on the part of CTA,” Nix-Hodes said. “They’re a part of city government and should be collaborating and cooperating on an important citywide goal.”
A CPS spokesperson said the district works with CTA on routes, as well as staggering arrival and departure times for buses to coordinate with school dismissals.
At his back-to-school campaign press conference, Brizard sounded an inclusive note.
“Everyone should be a partner in our efforts to get our kids into school on the first day and prepared for the classroom,” he said.
Hunter Clauss contributed reporting