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Homeless, but still learning
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Ky’Heir Finger, a sixth-grader at P. Ross Berry Middle School, walks upstairs to a tutoring session at Beatitude House, where she’s lived for two years.
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Jean White works with Corra Koellner, 7, during a tutoring session at Beatitude House.
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William D Lewis The Vindicator Tutor Helen Italiano works with sisters and Naferteria, left, and Treasure Green during a tutoring session at the Rescue Mission where they live.
By DENISE DICK
denise_dick@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
Twin sisters Ky’Heir and Ky’Liah Finger, 11, have moved a lot during their young lives.
They, their mother and brother lived in apartments, a house and a shelter in Cleveland before moving to Youngstown, where they first stayed at the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning
Valley and then settled at Beatitude House. They’ve been there for two years.
With those moves come new schools, new teachers, new friends, new places to fit in. They take it in stride, though.
“It’s not hard,” said Ky’Heir. “I’m used to it. We moved a lot in Cleveland.”
The twins — Ky’Heir, who is quiet around strangers, and Ky-Liah, more of an extrovert — are among the 246 children served this year through the city schools’ Homeless Outreach Project for Education. The number peaked last year at more than 500.
Nestled into a corner on the third floor of Beatitude House with other kids milling about, the girls, both sixth-graders at P. Ross Berry Middle School, concentrate on schoolwork with tutor Helen Italiano.
“It’s not uncommon for some of these kids to move five or six times in a year,” Italiano said.
She’s been with the program since it was started about 20 years ago by the Junior League of Youngstown. When the Junior League turned the program over to the district, Italiano started working part time for the schools, continuing the work she started as a volunteer.
“It’s amazing how strong kids are,” she said.
Next month, Ky’Heir, Ky’Liah and their mother will move again — to an apartment on Jacobs Road. Their brother moved out last year.
They’re excited about the change and are sending invitations for their 12th birthday party, inviting friends to their new home.
“I’m partway excited,” Ky’Heir said. “My friends are here.”
Ky’Liah looks forward to larger living quarters and being free of the curfew Beatitude House mandates.
The girls will be able to stay in the same school next year and say tutoring helps with the work.
“I got a BUG Award at school,” Ky’Liah said. “It means Bringing Up Grades.”
Her social studies grade rose from an F to a C, math improved from a C to a B and she’s gotten better at language arts, too.
The twins acknowledge they sometimes struggle to stay out of trouble. Ky’Heir has a problem with another girl at school and Ky’Liah often bickers with a boy in her class.
“I get mad when he says things about my parents,” Ky’Liah said. “He says stuff about our dad, and he doesn’t even know our dad.”
“We don’t even know our dad,” Ky’Heir said.
HOPE works with children in shelters, including Beatitude House, Rescue Mission, Daybreak, Sojourner House, Project Safe and the YWCA’s transitional home. HOPE provides tutoring at those sites and at schools.
Denise Vaclav-Danko, homeless-youth liaison, said the program works to remove barriers to children attending school.
HOPE works to allow a child’s education even if the family’s focus is elsewhere.
“They’re thinking about clothing and the things they need for survival, they’re not thinking about education,” she said.
One of the biggest obstacles is transportation. Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Act, a child must be permitted to continue to attend a particular school even if he or she becomes homeless.
If a child has attended Girard schools, for example, and his family becomes homeless, moving to a shelter in Youngstown, the child may continue to attend the home school.
In those instances, HOPE personnel would work with the two school districts, one bus driver transporting the child to the city boundary where the other district’s bus driver would pick him up.
“It’s a federal law that you cannot deny children access to school because of homelessness,” Vaclav-Danko said.
HOPE personnel become the voice for homeless families if a dispute arises with a school.
Other homeless children live in hotels, presenting more logistical hoops.
“For children living in hotels we try to provide bus passes if transportation doesn’t work within the cycle,” Vaclav-Danko said. “We work directly with the transportation [department] within the districts.”
They arrange it so the homeless child living in a hotel is either the first person picked up or last dropped off to avoid scrutiny from other children.
With the economic downturn, the district is seeing more homeless children who are part of the “doubled-up population.”
“That would be if my sister lost her job and has three children, and they lost their home and come to live with me,” the liaison said.
Those children are more difficult to track, she said. Usually, doubled-up families come to the attention of the program through the schools.
The program sees people from the suburbs, too.
“Homelessness can happen to anybody at any time, especially the way the economy is,” Vaclav-Danko said.
New York native Alicia Green’s daughters started in the city schools early this year. The family relocated to the Mahoning Valley, where Green has family, to get away from drugs, she said. The family was evicted from Hampshire House apartments in Warren and moved in with Green’s aunt in Youngstown. When that didn’t work out, they settled at the Rescue Mission.
Third-grader Treasure, 9, and second-grader Neferteria, 8, attend Martin Luther King Elementary School, and Nylicia, 13, is a sixth-grader at P. Ross Berry. They say it’s been easy for them to make new friends.
Adjusting to a new school has proved more difficult for Christina, 16, a sophomore at East High School.
“It’s hard to make new friends and start over and to try to fit in,” she said.
Christina missed school after her grandmother died, so she’s had to catch up with her classes too.
She’s attended five schools in five districts in her school career.
Green is looking for work as a maid or in some type of housekeeping but has a problem with transportation. She’s hoping to move her family into a HUD apartment soon.
While Ky’Heir and Ky’Liah’s mother looks for a job as a secretary, the twins keep a notebook full of sketches of their clothing designs. They plan to be either models or fashion designers when they grow up.
“That’s something I know I have to do to be a fashion designer,” Ky’Heir said. “I have to finish school and go to college to get either a bachelor’s or master’s
degree.”
Italiano runs into many of the children she tutored through HOPE years later as successful adults.
Recently she encountered a former student who now manages an area restaurant.
“There are many success stories,” Italiano said. “That’s what it’s all about.”