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Persuasive Essay On Homeless Students

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More than 269,000 California public school students don’t have a consistent place to call home at night. Most of these students range from preschool through 5th grade, and live in inadequate homes with friends or family, sleep in cars, or on the streets. Shockingly, only 15 percent of districts reported having no homeless students enrolled at their schools. Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and San Diego are some of the school districts that have the highest rates of homelessness in their student population. Brenda Dowdy, a liaison between the school and homeless students in San Bernardino County, recounts visiting a house that had 21 children and their parents staying in it, “There was no running water or a refrigerator. The kids had placed a mattress in a closet and treated it as if it were a room.”
Many of these students experience great difficulty in continuing their education and maintaining their grades due to their unstable living conditions. Most are hungry, don’t have a place to do homework with an internet connection, or even a place to shower. School becomes a hope and distraction for them, and most likely is their only way of escaping homelessness. Patricia Julianelle, director of state projects at the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, said on a conference call with the press, “For many of these students, school is their primary safety net or their only safety net.”
When one sees homeless youth on the streets, it is inferred that

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