Scott C., a junior at Riverview Gardens High School, loves to play football and can play the saxophone, violin, piano, and guitar. However, in his freshman year, he was not able to participate in school activities because of his absences.
That year, he missed almost 120 days because he was homeless — and the school district allegedly did not properly register him for classes or transportation, according to the August 2018 federal lawsuit filed against the Riverview Gardens School District and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
The other student named in the federal lawsuit is Miles M., who loves physics and hopes to design a video game one day. But his academic success was hampered as a freshman when he missed several months of school because he was homeless. As with Scott C., the lawsuit claims that the school allegedly violated the federal McKinney-Vento Act, which requires school districts to enroll homeless students and provide transportation, as well as offer the necessary academic, mental health and wellness support systems needed to succeed.
Now the two students’ stories have changed the way the school district and the state will be addressing homeless students.
“It is incredibly important to me that the district and state understand the challenges my family and I faced and the barriers I had to deal with while just trying to get a good education,” Miles M. said.
On February 12, DESE and the school district entered into a landmark settlement and a consent decree with the students’ families to make substantial changes to state and district policies regarding students experiencing homelessness.
“DESE has agreed to enhance its processes related to monitoring how Missouri school districts provide services to students experiencing homelessness,” a DESE spokeswoman said.
Riverview Gardens denies the allegations in the lawsuit, a district spokesman said, but “are committed to doing the work agreed to in the consent decree.”
“RGSD is always striving to expand and improve upon the assistance we offer our families, despite being one of the most underfunded districts in Missouri,” the district stated.
By federal law, the school district is required to have admission specialists who know how to identify families in transition and work with them to get their children into classes and other services quickly. The district has agreed to implement recommendations identified by expert Patricia Julianelle, the consent decree’s mediator. This will also help the district become a model for school districts statewide on addressing homelessness, the families’ attorneys said.
Miles M., also now a junior at Riverview Gardens, said he was excited about the settlement and consent decree.
“I love learning, I want a good resume for college, and I care about doing well in school and competing in track,” Miles M. said. “But I didn’t feel like I had the supports to do any of that, and I felt singled out because of my living situation.”
Miles M. and his family moved to the St. Louis region in the summer of 2017, after his abusive step-father left their family and his mother lost her job. Making the move was Miles M., his mother, his grandmother who has Alzheimer’s disease, and his then 16-year-old sister who was four months pregnant at the time.
At first, they stayed with a family friend in his two-bedroom house within the Riverview Gardens School District. Yet while his sister Molly was in the hospital giving birth in October 2017, they were told they had to find a new place to stay. In October and November 2017, the five of them, now including Molly’s infant son, stayed in several different places before ending up in a motel where they stayed from about December 2017 to May 2018. The motel room had one queen-size bed.
Miles’ mother attempted to enroll him and his sister in Riverview Gardens High School in the summer of 2017, before the school year began, the lawsuit states.
His mother phoned the school multiple times, but no one answered, the suit states. And when she went to the school in person she was allegedly turned away because she did not have an appointment. When, after about three weeks, she finally reached someone at the school, she was told that before her children could begin attending, she needed to produce numerous documents, including a copy of the lease for her friend’s apartment and a notarized letter stating that the family was staying there. The children missed several weeks of school and had to stay in a crowded house with no space to themselves, the lawsuit states.
Then when they moved into the motel, it took the district until December to arrange transportation for Miles, just in time for him to take final exams on material he had missed.
Scott C.’s experience was strikingly similar. His family was living in a small apartment with another family. On warm nights, all eight of them had to sleep in the living room because it was the only one with air conditioning. Attorneys said even after they had legal representation, it was a battle to get him registered and arrange transportation.
“We brought this lawsuit because of all the barriers I faced just trying to enroll my kids in RGSD,” said Rio M., Miles’ mother. “The years I spent trying to handle all the challenges with the school, on top of finding somewhere to live and providing for my family, has been overwhelming. I sincerely hope that this settlement will help ensure no families have to go through what we did just to make sure their kids can go to school and learn. I’m trying not to cry, but I’m eternally grateful for everything that all the advocates working on our behalf have done to make this happen.”
Two nonprofits joined the lawsuit with the two families: Metropolitan Congregations United and Empower Missouri. The representing law firms were Public Counsel, the Education Justice Program of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, and Arnold & Porter.
“This settlement will help address the disproportionate impact of educational deprivations on communities of color,” said Luz María Henríquez, managing attorney at the Legal Services of Eastern Missouri Education Justice Program.
Legal Services has seen hundreds of these cases over the last decade and across the region, Henríquez said. It was not isolated to Riverview Gardens, by far.
According to Riverview Gardens’ statement, the district was taking proactive measures prior to the lawsuit to address the needs of the nearly 500 students in transition who attend RGSD schools.
“Those measures include training staff to recognize signs of homelessness, providing transportation, monitoring attendance and connecting families with housing and food resources,” it states.
The district also has a team of counselors who provide trauma-focused counseling services to our students in transition, as well as many of our other students who have experienced trauma and face challenges, it states.
“It’s emotional to think about everything that my family has been through these past few years,” Miles M. said, “but I’m really proud of the role I played in making things better for all kids by making sure that all kids facing these types of challenges can get a good education.”
