There were at least 269,000 K-12 students in California experiencing homelessness at the end of the 2018-19 school year — enough children and teens to fill Dodgers Stadium five times over — and that number was likely a gross underestimate, a UCLA report said.
In the face of pandemic-related job losses and economic instability, researchers believe that the number of homeless students in California is likely to surge, according to the study from UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools.
The report, released Wednesday, asserts that the networks of schools, school districts and local organizations that act as safety nets for these students continue to be vastly under-resourced, contributing to disproportionately poor outcomes for pupils impacted by unstable housing.
“Given that we have more students than in any other state in the country, we don’t have the systems and resources in place … to address this issue,” said Joseph Bishop, Director at UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools and coauthor of the study.
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