Alison is only 14 but she knows what she wants to be when she grows up: A surgeon. It’s not easy to study, however, when you’re so exhausted and hungry you can barely get through 9th-grade biology.
An immigrant from Colombia, Alison is one of more than 200,000 K-12 students in California considered homeless because they lack stable housing. And like most of those students, she lives with her family in a home shared with other families—in her case, two other families.
“I go to school every day because I like school, but sometimes I can’t concentrate,” said the Santa Maria teenager whose district reports nearly a third of its students are homeless. “When you’re that tired it affects your personality. You feel like … not much.”
[For more on this story by CAROLYN JONES AND DANIEL J. WILLIS , go to https://www.theatlantic.com/ed...ile-homeless/542082/]
Photo: The Good Samaritan Shelter in Santa Maria, CA
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