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School Doors Slammed on Kids
Used to Be No Home, No School…Commemorating the Progress
We need something to celebrate — a victory for the little people if you will.
This, the 25th anniversary of the passage of a law opening school door for homeless kids, is worth celebrating.
Victories like this take lots of work, but when they happen, we remember and then build on our progress. Since the number of students identified as homeless continues to skyrocket, we can’t quit now!
In Aurora, IL, way back in the summer of 1993, 3 kids were told they couldn’t return to their schools when the new school year started because they were homeless. (Here’s the back story.) They were staying at the shelter that I was running.
The mom was willing to fight. A rag-tag group of advocates, a pro bono lawyer, and the media piled on. We lost the initial court battle, but we won in the end with the first state law in the country specifying educational rights for homeless kids.
