HAWAI`I FAILS HOMELESS CHILDREN
Honolulu Advertiser - Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The state has failed so badly at helping homeless children get to and from public schools that federal courts should intervene in the situation, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and two other parties....
...The suit, filed by the ACLU, the Lawyers for Equal Justice and the law firm Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing, alleges that the state has failed to carry out a section of federal law called the McKinney-Vento Act, which requires state and local school districts to help homeless children receive educational services....
But the program has been so badly managed that the overall effect "is that homeless children are turned away at the schoolhouse door, experience significant delays in enrolling in public school, are forced to unnecessarily change schools and/or are denied access to transportation or other services necessary to receive a public school education," the plaintiffs charged....
...One of the plaintiffs in the suit, Alice Greenwood, has been homeless since May 2006 when she and her 6-year-old son lost their Nanakuli rental residence.
They lived in a tent at Ma`ili Beach Park until March of this year, and Greenwood, who has physical disabilities, would struggle to take her son on the bus to Nanakuli Elementary School, where he was enrolled in the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program, according to the suit.
She encountered repeated difficulties in obtaining bus passes for herself and her son, and as a result, the boy missed 33 days of school last year, according to the suit.
At one point, school officials indicated that Greenwood might lose custody of her son if she could not arrange transportation for him, the suit alleged....
