Abstract
This qualitative study examines the collaboration and leadership practice that influences the education of homeless students in a large Mid-Atlantic city. The perspectives of administrators and staff members from three homeless shelters are analyzed with insights from Spillane’s (Distributed leadership, 2006) distributed leadership theory. Findings from the study indicate that differences in shelter and school structures and cultures present significant obstacles to productive communication that would facilitate homeless children’s schooling. Several structural and programmatic recommendations are made towards developing more effective leadership practice among schools and shelters.
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Notes
Like poor students who are housed, students who are homeless tend to be affected by wider poverty-related factors (difficult living and learning environments, under-resourced schools, insufficient bridging social capital, health and nutrition deficits, etc.). However, in addition to transportation and attendance difficulties, homeless students are more commonly penalized than the housed poor by the balkanization of social services, insufficient practitioner understandings and governmental funding of homeless legislation (i.e., the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act), and the severe social and emotional stigma associated with homelessness.
The political turmoil attached to the McKinney-Vento Act is significant not only in that the Act requires schools to enroll and/or transport students, but that no federal or state funding accompanies the Act. School districts’ budgets are often stretched exceedingly thin in attempting to transport the students. Accordingly, there are ongoing debates at federal, state, and local levels about how to pay for these services. Homeless lobbying groups such as National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) have taken on major roles in such discussions.
Because community voices are muted (at best) in the literature on homeless education, this study is purposefully inclusive of only community perceptions of leadership and collaboration. See Miller and Hafner (2008) for work that incorporates school leaders’ perceptions of joint-action in these contexts.
The leader-plus dimension of Spillane’s model also considers the importance of organizational actors’ perceptions of one another. That is, how one acts is impacted by his/her perceptions of his/her colleagues (and the roles they play). Accordingly, in this study the practice of community actors is closely tied to their perceptions of the school district.
Pseudonyms are used for all proper names in this study.
Data provided by the Smithtown homeless liaison.
Data about district responsibilities gathered from Smithtown homeless liaison.
The person who is designated as the district homeless liaison also carries out a number of other district related responsibilities—her work with homeless issues is only one element of her broader student-services job description.
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Miller, P.M. Leadership Practice in Service of Homeless Students: An Examination of Community Perceptions. Urban Rev 41, 222–250 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-008-0107-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-008-0107-9