VOL.101.NO.57
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
KANSAS STATE
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
TOPEKA KS 66612
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
ADVERTISING:864-4358
- TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1991
(USPS 650-640)
NEWS:864-4810
Learning without a home
Lawrence schools fight to teach and love 91 homeless children
EDITOR'S NOTE: The names of the children in this story have been changed or omitted to protect their identities.
By Jennifer Bach Kansan staff writer
It has been a little more than nine months since 7-year-old Mary left Lawrence in search of yet another place to call home.
But Jeannie Schavez-Martinez still keeps the note Mary gave her just before she disappeared.
Beneath two yellow-crayoned clouds connected under a pink, blue and purple rainbow, Mary wrote what she wanted to be when she grew up.
I would like to be a teacher, just like Jeannie.
Schazev - Martinez smiles over the note, but it saddens her, too. She knows that Mary, like most homeless children, probably will not make it past the eighth grade before dropping out of school.
Schavez-Martinez, coordinator of the homeless educational project for the Lawrence school district, spent time getting to know Mary and helping her.
Living in a large, dark and dingy shelter with her father, Mary's companions included alcoholics and men whose institutionalized mental problems.
And Schavez-Martinez.
Schaeve-Martinez watched as Mary, without any stable place to call home, turned for comfort to the elementary school she attended.
Lawrence schools may be the only real home for 91 children who must cope with having no place to study, no school and no play. We play with and no place to call home.
The problem of homelessness is more than drunks sleeping under the Sixth Street bridge and bag ladies dropping down Massachusetts Street.
Lawrence School District 497 statistics show that 55 school children are temporarily living with a child one child is living at a campground.
And like Mary, 35 children sleep in shelters with no permanent home to
How much schools help
What Lawrence schools provide
tutors in shelters
* after-school tutoring at
attendance centers
* school-to-shelter bus service
* free breakfast
* free lunches
* book-free waivers
* other fee waivers
go to when the school day ends
What they don't provide
- before- or after-school study clubs
* before-school tutoring at attendance centers
* free gym clothes
* free supply kits that could include pencils, paper, etc.
Lawrence educators and social workers realize that children are the most innocent and tragic victims of this growing social problem.
Melissa Unterberg / KANSAN
Experts say it is hard to keep track of these kids, hard to give them reason to care about the future and even harder to help them.
Truancy and attendance
Mary liked and cared enough about school to get up and go almost every morning, regardless of where little she had slept the night before.
Mary was an exception.
Because of the daily problems they face, most homeless children do not make it to school every day.
Living with friends or relatives and sometimes with strangers, homelife children are forced to skip school to do chores or baby-sit if their parents would not allow it, said Robert Taylor, administrator for the Lawrence school district.
"it's hard to define truancy," he said. "A parent will call and say their child is sick, and our best guess is that the child is not sick. The mother probably wants the child to stay home and babysit."
When faced with questions like, "Where am I going to sleep tonight?" and "Where am I going to sleep in the nights to come?" completing homework and go to school to the next day seem unimportant, Taylor said.
Although missing a few days of school is not uncommon, homeless children end up missing larger portions of their education because they change schools so often, he said.
First-grade teacher Stephanie Rorick had an 11-year-old boy in his fifth grade New York Elementary School class for just six weeks in 1989.
His family had hithikked from Oklahoma to Lawrence in search of employment. Rorick said.
"One day he was there and the next he was gone," Rorick said. "He had no chance to say goodbye. His classmates were leaving, he was leaving, and neither did he."
It is difficult for administrators and teachers to keep track of home- less students, but the toughest burden falls on the children. Rorick said.
Some basic educational skills such as reading and math that children miss during transient periods are lost forever, and the more children change schools, the further behind they fall, she said.
"It does not matter how bright you are as a child." Schavez-Martinez said. "If you miss school, if you just need to leave school, you can be so different that you lose out."
Taylor said that chasing down a homeless child's school records was the first problem administrators were dealing with homeless children.
"our intent is to say, 'Get them in school and have teachers who are sensitive to them,'" Taylor said. "Most of the students the know kids are homeless just by the fact they do not come to school with records."
Rorick said that school administrators had sent for her fifth-grade student's records as soon as he
arrived,but they never received them.
Although dealing with homeless children while they are in the educational system is difficult, dealing with it is impossible when they disappear.
Rorick said that after spending weeks or months helping a homeless child develop educational skills, it is difficult for teachers to see them move.
"You spend time trying to educate them, and when they leave, it is like someone pulled the rug out from there. They have to start from scratch."
"It's very sad to watch a child leave and wonder if they're going to be safe, where they're going to live and what they're going to take care of them," she said.
Other school district administrators in the United States do not think homeless children are worth the money they search for their records. Taylor said,
"Some school districts take the attitude of, 'They're going to be gone in two weeks anyway, so why worry about them?' he said.
"Why worry about them?" Schavez-Marting asked.
Because, she said, the problem of homelessness is an endless chain reaction: Homeless children of today who do not complete their education lead to future generations of uneducated, homeless adults and children.
"When they miss school, they miss very basic education components," she said. "That's why they get behind, that's why they get frustrated, and that's why they eventually drop."
When Schavez-Martinez first met Mary, she met a frustrated, angry and sad child.
Anger and Frustration
Mary's hardened attitude toward others evolved from constantly being on the move and dealing with men who continually told her she was
See HOMELESS, p.10
Proposal would let Legal Services act as KU adversary
By Blaine Kimrey Kansan staff writer
Kansanstaffwriter
For three days in October, they had to wake up at 4 a.m. to dump the water dripping into buckets from their Stouffer Place apartment ceiling.
Adela and Vincente Bortone considered taking legal action against the University of Kansas for the inconvenience, but they had a problem.
"We are students, and we can't afford to pay a lot of money for a lawyer," said Adela Bortone. San Jose, Global, Venezuela, graduate student.
Although KU Legal Services was established in 1979 to provide inexpensive legal counsel for KU students, its operational guidelines state that Legal Services cannot act as a University adversary in any case.
That soon may change.
Members of the Legal Services Student Advisory Board are working on a proposal requesting that members of Legal Services be allowed to give legal advice to students who have problems with the University.
"That would make Legal Services a lot more useful tool," said James LaSalle, head of the advisory board.
Although the University has fixed her ceiling for no charge, Bortone said that advice from the service could have helped her solve her problems.
LaSalle said Legal Services had turned away many students this year who had complaints about the University.
Some students proceed to call Lawrence attorneys for help, he said.
However, Lawrence attornneys often cannot help because students' concerns involve the internal functioning of the brain. So it's nice we perk our kids little about, LaSalle said.
He said members of the service knew more about the internal functioning of the University and therefore could help students more effectively.
Don Strole, Lawrence attorney and member of the student advisory board, agreed with LaSalle.
He said Legal Services not only
would be a more effective adviser for students upset with the University, but if also would be a less expensive than a local attorney.
"Attorneys aren't free," he said.
Jo Hardesty
Student Senate finances Legal Services each year from the Senate budget, which is supported by the student activity fee.
For fiscal year 1992, Senate allocated $186,781 to the service, which works out to be a cost of less than $10 a year for each KU student.
Darren Fulcher, student body president, said, "Students should be able to take advantage of what they're paying for."
He said he supported the idea of Legal Services being an advisory advocate for students upset with the University.
Jo Hardesty, director of the service,
said members of the advisory board
would have a proposal drafted by this
spring.
She said that after a small majority approval by the advisory board, a two-thirds vote of Sonate would be passed, in respect to be passed on the chancellor.
If the chancellor approves the proposal, Legal Services would be able to advise students with complaints against the University by Fall 1992, Hardesty said.
Fulcher said he thought Senate would approve the proposal.
"Senate is pushing for what's best for students and will most definitely be behind anything that empowers the students to use their funds more effectively," he said.
Chancellor Gene A. Budig could not be reached yesterday for comment.
If the proposal passes, Legal Services will be able to provide legal advice, but not attorneys, for students in cases against the University, Hardesty said.
Seventy-five percent of people with HIV infected heterosexually
The Associated Press
GENEVA — About 75 percent of people with the AIDS virus worldwide were infected through heterosexual sex, but it still accounts for only a small fraction of cases in North America and Europe, the World Health Organization said today.
The Geneva-based agency said up to 5,000 people are infected each day and predicted the number of infections in four-fold by the end of the decade.
However, tests of possible AIDS vaccines are planned for Thailand, Uganda, Rwanda and Brazil, said Dr. Michael Merson, head of the U.N. health agency's AIDS program. The tests, which will involve seven thousand people in a year, mark a departure from previous approaches favoring tests on animals.
About a dozen potential vaccines are being tested, and several more may be available when testing starts.
Merson said an estimated 8 million to 10 million adults carry the human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to AIDS.
"The major point is that we're not going to have a vaccine today and we're not going to have a vaccine tomorrow," Merson said. "We have to do this, we can to inform public now of the risks, and the need for safer sex."
Merson, however, advised against having too much hope for the vaccines.
WHO said that heterosexual intercourse was responsible for HIV infections in most Third World nations, particularly in Africa.
"We have predicted that by the year 2000 there will be 40 million adults and children infected with HIV." Merson said.
It usually takes about 10 years for a person with HIV to show full signs of acquired immune deficiencies. The virus infects the immune system and leads to death.
WHO said there has been a 40-fold increase in reported AIDS cases in Central America during the past four years and that 10,000 HIV-infected children have been born in Latin America.
WHO said heterosexual intercourse was "overwhelmingly" responsible for the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 50 million children and 900,000 babies have been infected by their mothers.
In Asia and Latin America, the virus is also spread mainly through heterosexual practices, said the agency.
In the United States, 100,000 HIV infections contracted through heterosexual sex have been reported since 1985, and 3,100 heterosexual AIDS cases were reported last year.
The federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reports 3 percent of American men and 34 percent of American women with the HIV virus were infected through heterosexual relations.
Homosexual men and intravenous drug users have accounted for most cases in North America and Europe. But the Pan American Health Organization said the infections contracted through hetero-
In Western Europe, 1,309 AIDS cases contracted through heterosexual sex were reported last year, WHO officials said.
American Indians face bias daily
Pair details experiences in Lawrence
By Rochelle Olson Kansan staff writer
During the spring of 1991, a photographer from University Relations was shooting photographs of Caverly Smith for a publication about multiculturalism at the University of Kansas.
Smith, president of the Native American Student Association, noticed a book about North American Indians in the rear window of a woman's scar.
He said he approached the car and was telling the photographer about the book as the woman was standing nearby.
Apache Club Crown Dancers from Haskell Indian Junior College perform a religious dance at the Kansas Union Ballroom as part of Native American Heritage month. The dance is performed at many functions.
The woman told Smith to stay away because she did not want the book to be stolen, Smith said.
"There's your multi-culturalism at KU," Smith said he told the photographer.
Smith and Hannes Combes, an education assistant to the president of Haskell Indian Junior College, spoke to about 20 students last night at Battenfield Scholarship Hall about the American Indian experience at KU and in Lawrence.
Smith attended school in Dallas, Texas, until high school, when his parents returned to New Mexico to live on a Navajo reservation.
He said his upbringing gave him a strong sense of both American Indian and non-Indian communities.
Students who desire a sense of American Indian community at KU can turn to the Native American Student Association, he said.
"If we ever get lonely or need support, we can find it," Smith said. "I've had a really good experience."
NATIVE AMERICAN MONTH
But Combest said Smith was an optimist.
She said that two years ago, an American Indian friend sought to rent an apartment in Lawrence.
But the friend was not bothered by the landlord's comment.
Combest said the man told her,
"They party so much I'm really scared about renting this to her."
If you don't understand American Indian people, all you have to do is ask, she said.
"I deal with worse than that every day," was her friend's reply, Combest said.
When she and the friend went to look at the apartment, the landlord addressed Combest, who is white, and ignored her friend, she said.
Combes said she was encouraged by efforts of KU administrators in the past two years to recruit Haskell students.
Tamara Plush, co-chairperson of University Scholarship Halls for Ethnic Reality, said the group co-sponsored the event to educate students.
"We're going to work on recruitment at Haskell and give them information on scholarship halls," she said.
1
Plush said the scholarship halls had a high retention rate and could help keep American Indian students at KU.